Thirling shrugged, with just one shoulder.
Falconer leaned in. ‘Pardon? I didn’t quite hear you.’
‘Yes,’ Thirling said, giving himself a shake. ‘Yes, you’re right. I’m sorry. But . . . where shall I stand? I can’t stand here.’ He took up his usual position at the top of the chancel steps. ‘The priest won’t be able to get to the altar without squeezing past and you know how my leg . . .’ He didn’t have to finish. When he was carried away with his music, the slightest touch could have him toppled into the font.
‘Simple!’ cried Falconer. ‘Stand facing this way.’ He turned and faced down the church from the altar rail. ‘Then, you can just step out for the music and then tuck yourself back afterwards, out of the way. You’ll have somewhere to sit, as well,’ he added, as a final temptation.
‘It isn’t really done, though, is it?’ Thirling said, dubiously.
Falconer spread his arms wide. ‘Richard,’ he said, ‘the people here will never have seen such pomp, will never have heard such music. If the choirmaster is standing facing the wrong way, what of it? They’ll never know. And also, you will be able to tell me when the bride is approaching, so I can begin my voluntary.’ Personally, Falconer thought he would probably feel the ground shake as she approached, but it didn’t hurt to have another pair of eyes helping out.
Thirling took up his putative position and practised stepping in and out. It seemed to work and he turned to thank his friend, who he saw to his horror, was doubled over on the bench, with his head between his knees. ‘Ambrose!’ he cried. ‘Whatever is it?’
Falconer flapped him away with one hand. ‘A spot of my old trouble,’ he muttered, his voice muffled by cloth. ‘I’ll be quite all right in a minute. Why don’t you go outside and see if the choir is in sight yet?’
‘But, Ambrose . . .’
‘Please. I’ll be perfectly well in a minute. I just need some quiet.’
Thirling limped off down the church and Falconer gave a groan. What a day to have this happen. With luck he would get through the service. With a lot of luck he would get through the day. He wasn’t sure whether crossing of fingers was allowed in church, but he did it anyway.
As the cart carrying the choir lurched towards Madingley, Marlowe amused himself by trying to identify the treble who would be sick first. His internal competition became null and void when two of the boys leaned over the side and parted with their breakfasts simultaneously. Marlowe comforted himself with the knowledge that at least this time he had not had money on it.
The cart was pulled by two elderly horses, who seemed unable to get into step with each other. Marlowe, despite being a Man of Kent had not spent much time at sea and fervently hoped he never would have to – the motion of the cart was beginning to make him feel queasy and that was without looking at the boys’ green faces. It was not a moment too soon that the church of St Mary came into view. Richard Thirling was standing at the lychgate, his hand raised theatrically to shield his eyes from the sun, already bright on this perfect wedding day.
‘Master Marlowe,’ he said, stepping forward as the carter pulled his horses in. ‘Umm . . .’ he nodded to Colwell and Parker. Parker was sporting a glorious black eye. He had more things on his mind than remembering names today. He didn’t even care whether the bruise would show; in other circumstance he would have moved Parker from decani to cantoris, to hide the blemish, but sufficient unto the day was the evil thereof, and what was a black eye between friends? The two boys who had been sick and the ones who almost had stood wanly in a row, leaning against the rough stones of the low wall skirting the churchyard. ‘Good journey?’ A couple of dozen eyes swivelled in his direction, but that was all the answer he would have. ‘Good.’ He rubbed his hands together. ‘Very good. This church, as you see, is rather smaller than we are used to, so I think we should go inside and let you get your bearings.’
‘Are there benches?’ the tiniest chorister asked.
Thirling bent down in an avuncular fashion and patted the child on the head. ‘Yes, yes, there are benches.’
‘Are they hard?’ The cart had not been over-endowed with cushions and everyone had taken rather a bouncing.
Thirling was in a cleft stick – he knew that the seats were hard, and it was not in his nature to dissemble. But he also knew his schoolboys. ‘Softish,’ he said. ‘As these things go.’
Muttering and grumbling the remnants of King’s College choir shambled in to the church. From the lychgate, they could be heard greeting the organist and complaining about the hardness of the seats. Then, they went quiet. Thirling took a deep breath and stepped forward to go in. Before he could reach the door he stopped, hackles rising, as three voices rose in song. He instantly recognized
Libera me Domine
, set by Byrd. It was beautiful. It was in tune. It was taken from the Office for the Dead.
Ursula Hynde sat on her bed, looking out of the window. Smoke billowed fitfully from the direction of Cambridge. People were wandering about, looking aimless and in the case of her brother-in-law, rather the worse for drink. One of the bride’s maids appeared to be eyeing up the shrubbery with the connivance of one of the bride’s men. But Ursula Hynde didn’t even see the flies in her ointment. She was getting married today and was suddenly scared out of her wits. She had spent so little time with her husband-to-be and none alone with him. She wasn’t even sure she could pick him out of a crowd. She hardly knew him, let alone love him. Her other marriage had been long ago and far away and when she remembered her brief married days, she seemed to be standing off to one side, watching it happen to two strangers.
She leapt to her feet as the knock came at the door. She spun round, to see her bride’s maids standing there, garlands of flowers in their hands. She stood rooted to the spot as they wound them around her neck and pinned one in her hair. She walked as one condemned down the landing and the magnificent staircase, as the girls prattled and sang. She was outside, crossing the park, she was nearing the church. She hung back, but the maids were relentless. Slowly but surely, Ursula Hynde approached her doom.
Benjamin Steane arrived at the church with only a few minutes to spare. The play and the riot which not so much followed it but took its place had made Cambridge a very difficult place to leave. He had no groom’s man to accompany him; he was moving into a new life and could take no one from the old with him. Friends and colleagues were at the church of course, having come by carriage, cart, foot and horse. They were all seated when he arrived, and he had just a moment to tweak his unaccustomed finery into place. Adopting his new stately walk, he stepped down into the church porch and paused. A young girl of the estate plucked his sleeve and he turned to her for a moment while she pinned a sprig of honeysuckle to the shoulder of his gown. He blessed her solemnly and swept on to take his place at the front of the church at the foot of the chancel steps to await his bride.
Without making it too obvious, he looked around to see who was there. Goad, of course, seated to one side. Johns, such a nice man; when he had settled into the palace, Steane half thought he might offer him a post. Norgate, various scholars and people he had met but could hardly remember. Ah, Roger Manwood, he knew him. And a strange, grey clad man by his side with singed whiskers on one side of his face who was probably an alchemist of some sort. Winterton, sporting a sling and the look of a man who had no right to have survived the previous two days.
He raised his head to look at the altar. There was the priest of St Mary’s looking imbecilically welcoming. Richard Thirling, facing down the nave, rubbing his eyes. A small choir, tucked round the edges of the Rood screen. A small frisson passed through him. Where was the organist? In fact, where was the organ?
But he needn’t have worried. Thirling looked to his right and gave a small nod and music filled the church. There was a shifting of the air behind him and Benjamin Steane turned to find his bride beside him, covered in flowers and as white as a ghost, leaning on, or being leaned on by, Francis Hynde.
‘Dearly beloved,’ began the priest, and the marriage service had begun.
The rest of the day went by at breakneck speed for Ursula Steane. Taken back to her room by her bride’s maids to change her clothes for something rather less crackly and more comfortable, although still glorious in crimson velvet, she sat down in the window seat whilst they brushed their hair and primped and preened for the dancing ahead. She had never felt her age as much as while she sat there, cooling her forehead against the glass, watching with unseeing eyes her guests walking the grounds of Madingley. She saw her husband, walking in the knot garden talking with Roger Manwood and John Dee. A little of her old self rose enough to the surface to remind her that she would
not
be welcoming either of them to the Bishop’s Palace when she became its chatelaine.
She raised her hand to tap on the glass and felt a roughness on the pane. She looked closer to see what it could be and saw that it was a message scratched into the glass, long ago with a diamond ring. It was a message from her young self, or so it seemed; ‘Ursul Black Sep 1555’ it said, in shaky letters. ‘I pmise to be a good wife’. She remembered the tears she had shed as she painstakingly scratched the message, so many years ago. But she took the message to heart, gave herself a shake and turned to her ladies.
‘Where’s my dress?’ she barked. ‘Come along, I have guests to greet.’
Anne, the maidservant, bent her head and whispered to whoever was listening. ‘She’s back! I knew it wouldn’t last long.’ Then, louder: ‘It’s here, mistress. Will you step into the frame and we’ll have you downstairs in the shake of a lamb’s tail.’
After some lacing and squeezing and upholstering, Ursula Steane was ready and, like a galleon in full sail, she went out to meet her husband.
He was still in the knot garden, standing in the centre by the sundial, but was now talking to some much more congenial people. His wife didn’t know who they were, but she was pretty certain that they were more congenial, as they were not Roger Manwood or John Dee. Her skirts brushed the lavender bushes that lined the paths of crushed shell in the garden and the sun beat down. Steane either heard or smelt her arrival and turned to her.
‘Dearest,’ he said, extending an arm and drawing her into the group. ‘May I introduce Dr Goad, Provost of King’s College, who I believe you may already know.’
She inclined her head to the little wizened man. He was older than Methuselah. They hadn’t met, not in all the man’s nine hundred years, but she appreciated her husband’s nice manners in assuming that they had. ‘Dr Goad,’ she said. ‘So nice to meet you at last. Benjamin has often spoken of you.’
Steane raised an eyebrow. He had been right to choose this woman – she would make an excellent wife for a man in his soon-to-be-exalted position. He moved slightly to his left and said, ‘Professor Michael Johns, Fellow of Corpus Christi. A most excellent scholar and friend.’
Johns was slightly surprised to hear this accolade. Although he had known Steane for a number of years, they had never been what he would consider friends. He had occasionally passed a particularly able student on to him, when he found that the pupil had exceeded his master, but that was all. Nonetheless, he smiled at Ursula and sketched a bow. ‘Delighted to meet you at last, Mistress Steane,’ he said with a smile.
She bowed her head. She hoped this wouldn’t go on for too long. She’d never had much of a head for names and the sun was very hot on her back. Crimson velvet had been a bad choice for so warm a day.
‘And finally,’ Steane said, with the air of a conjuror producing a rabbit, ‘and if I may be so uncivil as to introduce them as a set, so to speak, Doctors Falconer and Thirling, who made such beautiful music possible at our wedding this morning.’
The two musicians bowed as one and extended their arms to where the choir stood in a motley group beside a table loaded with sweetmeats and flagons of drink. One of the King’s men was engaged in a tussle with one of the boys, trying to remove a beaker of ale from the child. Falconer coughed to attract their attention and most of them gathered their wits in time to bow prettily to the bride.
‘The choir,’ Thirling explained.
Ursula Steane realized that there had been music at the ceremony. She had no ear for it, and anyway at that point was almost catatonic with fear. But, she was a lady, and knew how to behave. ‘Beautiful singing,’ she said. ‘I congratulate you. I am sure my husband will make sure that there is a coin for everyone, before you return to Cambridge.’
Steane’s eyebrows both went up at this; he had after all married her for
her
money, not so that she could disseminate his wherever she liked. He smiled, though, and nodded. An awkward silence fell on the group. Across every face the desperation of the socially inept flickered. Johns came to the rescue.
‘Mistress Steane,’ he said, then realized that he may have made a gaffe. ‘Or should that be Lady Ursula?’
‘Not yet, Professor Johns,’ she said. ‘Not until my husband is enthroned as Bishop, which is not for a few weeks.’
‘Ah,’ Johns said. That would be a useful titbit to drop into the High Table gossip. ‘So, where will you be staying until then? Here?’
She smiled. ‘No, I think I have taken enough of my brother-in-law’s hospitality as it is. Although, had things been different, I would have been mistress here.’
Johns looked interested. All grist to the rumour mill. ‘Indeed?’
‘My first husband . . . but, no,’ she said firmly. ‘My first husband is a very old tale, Professor Johns, and often told. No, we will be staying in one of my . . . of my
husband’s
houses until the palace is ready.’
So, that was it. A rich widow. Johns arranged his smile to elicit more confidences. ‘But, you know this house well?’
‘Very well. I have spent many years here, all told, I should imagine. Let me show you the Physick Garden. It is quite unusual to find one in a private house, but Francis’ mother was very interested in such things, God rest her soul, and planted rather a fine one over there, behind that wall.’