Til Death Do Us Part (3 page)

‘I'm honoured to meet you, Reverend Winward.'

‘As I am to meet you, Reverend Mackay,' Courtney assured fulsomely. ‘During my very brief sojourn in your parish I have already heard much praise of your diligence in the service of our Faith. I shall most certainly do my utmost endeavours to bring these most favourable opinions to the attention of our Lord Archbishop, at the earliest opportunity.'

He produced two rolled scrolls of vellum from his pocket and handed them to the other man.

‘Will you please read these very carefully? They are my identification and authorization from His Grace, my Lord Archbishop of the Ecclesiastical Province of Canterbury. I am currently acting as a confidential secretary and personal aide to His Grace, and am touring his province to ascertain the structural condition of our churches and the ministries of our clergy.'

Mackay quickly read the documents, and gasped with awed respect. ‘His Grace has added a footnote affirming that you are his trusted friend, and has appended his personal signature, Charles Manners-Sutton. What an honour he does you, Reverend Winward!'

‘Indeed he does; and I have been greatly blessed by his trust and friendship for these many years. But of course, because of the highly confidential nature of the investigative task His Grace has currently entrusted to myself, concerning in part your own possible advancement in position, I would request that you do not speak of our present conversation to anyone. There are certain parish incumbents in this diocese who are sadly lacking in true Christian charity, and who bitterly resent the advancement of those whom they consider to be of more lowly status than themselves.'

‘I am most gratified by your high opinion of my work here, Reverend Winward.' Horace Mackay, a lowly penurious curate, was simultaneously astounded and delighted. ‘And of course I do assure you that not a word about our conversation will ever fall from my lips. I can only say that although I am unworthy, I do my very best to serve our Lord. And if in my own humble way I can be of any service whatsoever to yourself, Reverend Sir, I beg you to demand it of me.'

‘Indeed I do have one demand to make on you, my dear Reverend Mackay. I've taken lodging at the Old Black Boy Inn here in the village. My demand is that you will come there to take refreshment and break bread with me this very day, and also permit me the pleasure of sitting beneath your pulpit during Evensong.'

Mackay felt near to weeping with joy at this invitation, and could only gasp in gratitude. ‘It will be a great honour to accept your proposals, Reverend Sir.'

‘Here is my arm, Reverend Mackay. We will walk to the inn, as befits Brothers in Christ.'

As they left the churchyard conjoined in arms and pace, Courtney was complacently certain.

‘Before this simple fool goes to his bed tonight, I‘ll have him eating out of my hand.'

T
he solitary bell of St Stephen's Chapel rang out across the flat central plateau of Redditch Town as the newly wedded couple exited the chapel's main door. In the skies the louring grey clouds suddenly rifted and a shaft of sunlight illumined their smiling faces as they were brought to a standstill by the small crowd of cheering and clapping wedding guests.

‘There now, what better omen could there be that these two am going to have a happy wedlock!' a woman proclaimed. ‘When the sun shines on a new-wed couple it's a certain sure sign that they'm going to be blessed wi' good fortune!'

The woman beside her frowned and shook her head. ‘Oh no, they'll not! They sat together and heard their banns called at least once to my knowledge, and everybody knows how unlucky that is. Their kids 'ull suffer sorely because they did that. The first-born will be an idiot and all the rest 'ull be deaf and dumb.' She nodded emphatically. ‘You mark my words, because they sat together to hear their banns called, they'll know naught but sorrow now they're wed.'

‘Don't talk such bloody rubbish.' Her husband sneered contemptuously. ‘Me and you never sat together and heard our banns called, did we, and the bloody sun shone bright on our wedding day. But all we've ever known is hard times and misery.'

‘That's only because you'm such a miserable useless bugger, Will Tyrwhitt!' She rounded on him furiously. ‘And I should have wed Harry Jakes when he begged me to, instead of being fool enough to believe all your lies!'

‘And I wish to God that you had taken the sarft bugger. And when I next sees him I'll tell him that he's more than welcome to take you now!' he retorted.

The pretty young, petite, blonde new bride tugged on her older, exceptionally tall and lanky husband's hand and he bent low, gazing adoringly into her sparkling blue eyes.

‘What is it, Amy?'

‘I just want to tell you how happy I am that I'm now Mrs Thomas Potts 'til death do us part.'

Tom Potts felt overwhelmed with joy, and tears stung his dark eyes as he told her, ‘You've made me the happiest man on God's earth, Amy, and I swear by all that I hold holy that, 'til death do us part, I'll be the best husband to you that any girl ever had.'

Josiah Danks, father of the bride, intervened. ‘Come on, you two, the wedding breakfast 'ull be ready and waiting.'

Pretty, buxom bridesmaid, Maisie Lock, also urged the bridal couple. ‘Yes, be quick and lead on, you two, I'm starving hungry.'

‘I'll wager you don't have the ale money, Tom?' the handsome, elegantly dressed best man, Doctor Hugh Laylor, accused jokingly.

‘You know very well that he never has money when it's his turn to buy.' The pleasantly ugly, remarkably muscular wedding curate John Clayton grinned.

Tom patted his pockets and frowned in mortification. ‘Dammit! I've clean forgotten to pick it up when I came out.'

‘There now! What did I tell you!' Hugh Laylor exclaimed. ‘Now you see how tight-fisted he is with his money, Amy. You'll be spending your married life on very short commons, I fear.'

Both he and John Clayton proffered Tom coins, but Tom laughingly refused.

‘No, thank you, I've plenty with me. I was merely testing your readiness to be good Samaritans.'

Led by Tom and Amy, with Hugh Laylor and Maisie Lock directly behind them, the procession of guests crossed to the chapel yard gateway, which had a chain stretched across it as a barrier.

The guardian of the barrier, a sandy-haired, broad-shouldered, scar-faced man, stepped forward to block the way.

‘Hold hard, Constable Potts, do you have money enough to pay the toll to pass through this gate?'

Tom grinned happily. ‘Yes, I do, Deputy Constable Bint.' He counted gold coins into the guardian's hand.

Ritchie Bint returned the grin, waved the fistful of coins above his head, and shouted, ‘Thanks to the good heart of Constable Potts, we'll all go home as drunk as Lords from this wedding.'

The procession cheered lustily as with a flourish Bint unfastened the chain, dropped it to the ground and with a bow invited, ‘Please to pass through the gate, Constable and Mistress Potts!'

In the roadway outside the chapel yard gate a fiddler and drummer, long ribbons streaming from their antiquated tricorn hats, struck up a lively tune.

Tom Potts blinked in surprise, and Hugh Laylor laughed at his expression and told him, ‘This is my contribution to the festivities, my friend. We can't let this happy occasion pass without music and dance, can we?'

The loud beating of the drum carried on the air and brought curious onlookers peering through windows and exiting from the doors of the nearby rows of buildings.

Some forty-five yards eastwards, standing outside the main entrance of the Fox and Goose Inn, florid-faced, fat-stomached Tommy Fowkes saw the exodus and hurried back into the large Select Front Parlour where his florid-faced, fat-stomached, panting and sweating wife and daughter were frantically laying the trestle tables with soup bowls, plates, cutlery, glasses, tankards and bottles of wine and stout.

‘Great God Almighty! What in Hell's name have you been about?' Fowkes shouted angrily. ‘This should all have been done and dusted by now. And where's the bloody cake? Why aren't you put it out ready?'

‘Don't you come bawling at us, Fowkes, or I'll be giving you something to make you wish you hadn't.' Gertrude Fowkes brandished a knife threateningly at her husband.

‘That's right, Ma, you tell him!' Her daughter Lily launched into a petulant tirade of her own. ‘It's all his fault that we'm run off our feet like this. It's not fair to me, is it, him giving our skivvies days off to get wed and be bridesmaid. It's not fair him making me slave like this! I'm the daughter of the boss, not a bloody skivvy!' Tears of chagrin glistened in her eyes as she finished plaintively, ‘And I wanted to be bridesmaid instead of bloody Maisie Lock. It's not fair.'

‘God save me! I'll fetch the bloody cake meself.' Tommy Fowkes groaned resignedly and stamped from the room.

Charles Bromley was at this moment a very troubled man. He sat, head bowed, at his kitchen table, sucking noisily on his crudely fashioned bone false teeth, fingers toying with his bulbous-lensed spectacles.

‘Well, Bromley, how many times must I repeat myself?' The squat, grossly overweight woman standing in the doorway demanded. ‘Why have you not come for me?'

The room was dank and cold but Bromley's pink bald pate shone with nervous perspiration.

‘Damn you, Bromley! Look me in the face and give me an answer!' She shouted in fury, and his hands jerked in fright, spilling his spectacles on to the table.

His normally egregiously mellifluous tone was now a reedy whine as he begged, ‘Please don't be angry with me, my dearest one. Today's event had merely slipped my mind.'

‘Today's event had slipped your mind?' Widow Gertrude Potts' eyes, normally mere slits in puffballs of fat, widened in exaggerated incredulity. ‘Slipped your mind? This day which you know well is a day of heartbreak for me! A day of purgatory! A day of bitter humiliation! This day is the worst day of my life! And you dare to say that it slipped your mind?'

He sighed heavily, put on his spectacles and rose to his feet. ‘I'll make ready to go with you, my dearest one.'

‘And be quick about it, or they'll all be too drunk to even hear what I mean to say.'

In the Select Front Parlour of the Fox and Goose, Tom and Amy had ceremoniously cut the cake, and all present had eaten a little of it, because not to do so would bring ill-luck upon both the abstainer and the bridal pair. Several toasts had been proposed and drunk and now the breakfast menu was being consumed amid a hubbub of talk and laughter.

On the top table two chairs were conspicuously empty, and Josiah Danks grimaced at Tom.

‘It don't look as if your Mam and her fancy man are coming, Tom. Why's that, do you suppose?'

Tom flushed with embarrassment, and could only mumble, ‘She's maybe sulking. We had high words last night, and she refused to speak to me this morning.'

‘I guessed as much when she didn't come to the chapel. She thinks that you've married beneath you, don't she? You being the son of an officer and gentleman, and my Amy being only the daughter of a common gamekeeper.'

Before Tom could reply the door of the room crashed open and black clad, thickly veiled Widow Potts limped ponderously across the threshold and halted, leaning heavily upon her two walking sticks.

The hubbub of talk and laughter stilled, curious eyes stared, and a man's voice questioned loudly, ‘Why's she come dressed for a funeral? Didn't anybody tell her that this is a wedding party?'

Charles Bromley entered, flicking nervous glances about the room.

Tom rose and went to them. ‘I'm so glad that you and Charles are come, Mother. Your chairs are waiting.'

He reached out to take her arm but she lashed at his hand with her walking sticks.

‘Don't touch me, you cruel, ungrateful wretch!' She turned to address the room at large. ‘I'm come here to tell the world how my unnatural beast of a son intends to treat me. He intends to cast me out from my own home, now that I'm too old and feeble to be of any use to him. He intends to put me into the Parish Poorhouse, and see me end my days as a penniless pauper.'

Here and there in the room sounded exclamations of shocked disapproval.

Tom stared at her in shock and gasped out, ‘That's not true, Mother! How can you say such things?'

‘I can say such things because they
are
true. I've heard you and that skivvy you've wed laughing together about what you're going to do with me. So for once in your miserable life act like a man, and confess to it.'

Amy's blue eyes flashed with temper. She jumped to her feet and shouted, ‘Tom's got naught to confess! He's got no intention of throwing you out of the lock-up, much as I'm dreading living there with you, because you're naught but a nasty-natured old bitch!'

‘There now, just hear her threatening and insulting me!' Widow Potts appealed to the room. ‘Insulting and threatening a poor, defenceless, crippled old woman!'

Mortally embarrassed, Tom tried to calm the situation. ‘Amy's not threatening you. Please will you and Charles come and sit with us and enjoy this wedding day. We both want you to be happy for us.'

‘You're inviting me to sit and enjoy the day in the company of you and that common trollop who hates and abuses me! And you're telling me that you both want me to be happy for you!' Widow Potts shook her hanging jowls and declaimed incredulously, ‘I cannot believe I'm hearing such hypocrisy. I would sooner sit a year in the company of fiends from Hell rather than spend another moment in the company of you pair!'

She swung about and limped from the room.