Wessex Tales: "For Viviana's Wedding" (Story 16)

  Chapter 6

  Long Tom was to hand in the courtyard, awaiting his lady at a mounting block they had contrived—for Viviana could spring to her saddle unaided, as fast as a man—holding the bridle of a snow-white palfrey borrowed from Juliana, cousin William de Turberville’s wife, just for the day.

  Viviana smiled back at the upturned faces of her people who stood squinting into sunlight, shouting lewd suggestions and hurrays. You’d not find a soul as stayed home or to field in the Okfords this day.

  There was “Yoo-hoo, you d’look lovely, dearie!” from Margaret, that had once been Viviana’s nurse. And cottars from the outlands, their children hiding, shy, behind their elders’ skirts, for never in their little lives had they credited so many mortal souls inhabiting one Earth…

  “Here, take my hand, milady.”

  “Thank you, Tom. Not used to this.”

  … workers from the manor waving hats; and Peter, miller’s lad from Bere Marsh, him as was so cross-eyed you couldn’t say if he was looking for the sunset or the dawn…

  “And you, Tom. You all right?” she asked, of him alone.

  “I dare say as I’ll mend.”

  … kitcheners, their blood and grease-stained cottes covered by the best they wore on holy days.

  “I had to, Tom. You know that.”

  “I d’know that right enough, Viv.”

  Dim Andrew attended, blubbering like a babe. He was thick as a block and as hunched as the burdens of Man, but he’d dig a ditch or hoe a row that quick you’d think he was a ten of oxen and their plough!

  Long Tom whispered, “There’s things on Earth as cassen be twixt thee and me.”

  Viviana sprang to the saddle, squeezing Tom’s hand, and them as didn’t choose that moment to blink would later swear to God she threw Long Tom a kiss.

  There were Turbervilles on foreign ground they’d soon claim for the kinship of their own…

  God bless you and your issue, Viv!”

  … and Old John, leaning now one way upon a quarter-staff as long as him, now the other, weighing heavily on patient Mary. And her, with her grinning brother Ralph, as folk said was lunatic at high summer’s moon, but harmless withal. Now the whole parish and more were cheering, leering that special wedding leer, tossing daisies at the bride, and buttercups, waving sprigs of elder, willow, oak, all grinning up at Viviana like mead-ripe fools at Pentecost.

  “Ready, milady?”

  “Lead on, Tom.” She smiled at the people so prettily—and she was that pretty today you should look at the lady yourself!

  It was no secret that Long Tom fancied her, though he did never say, but tongues will wag, and these few years he’d said not a contrary word to dissuade them. There was some half suspected the lady, to boot, but... Best leave the matter there.

  Off they went, Herself pale in pale yellow, her brown wool mantle-cloak about her shoulders, with a coif of white on top to match the colour of her gentle palfrey down below.

  The distance to the church was not so far they couldn’t have walked it there and back with half the fuss, but this was their lady’s wedding, and if she and her manor were to be carried away, she’d be carried proper, as befitting gentry, at the head of a ragged procession of humans, such swine as hadn’t been slaughtered, and curs.

  Thus they arrived at Okford church and the two priests at the altar. (Yes, two! One half the parish was in the patronage of the Lord of the Manor, the other burdened by those wretched monks at Montacute Priory.) Through the centuries they’d worked out a truce, alternating in the priestly offices. But this was the wedding of their lady and her lord, and for this occasion the black-cowled devils had split the liturgy right through and through. Like the baby of Solomon’s judgement, they had planned to clean cut it in two!

  Here by her church were the Turberville horses, from far and a mud-spattered wide, loose-hobbled outside the church garth. And here in her church were the Turbervilles, prosperous all—and Robert Fitzpaine—milling about in the gloom, for though it was noon, there were naught but old arrow slits high in the walls of the nave.

  But she shone, did our lady; Bartholemew Turberville’s heart swelled with pride.

  He took her hand. “My dear!” he said, and reached…

  “Bartholemew,” she said, “till later, love. Restraint!”

  And with that they walked to their wedding through a ragged row of tapers, rush lights, best beeswax candles and better peasant grins.