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.