But Jim's mind rode along on the sonorous sound of the Latin. After the raw air in the courtyard and the businesslike marriage there—before that the battle and his sickness—now there was a general happiness that Brian and Geronde were united at last… the warmth and the solemn ceremony gradually enfolded him in an unusual feeling of peace and comfort. He no longer felt himself merely a spectator from another time, but one of those who belonged here at this moment.
It rang a long-time forgotten memory of a Sunday in a little church of a small community of retirees in Canada, when his father had briefly considered giving up his work and settling there.
It had been fall, and on that Sunday the service had been one of old-fashioned Thanksgiving. The church had been filled, mostly by the local people, and those parishioners were generally in middle age, or older. The men were mostly retired, living with their wives on small pensions, they often owned small properties from as little as half an acre to two acres, fertile farming land on the Fraser River delta. They had followed the time-worn English custom of making-do on the pensions, together with what they had saved and what they could grow, in their later years.
What was sharpest in Jim's memory was their singing of the harvest hymn—
Come, ye joyful people! Come!
Raise the song of harvest home!
All is safely gathered in.
Ere the winter storms begin…
There had been a great and real unity in joyfulness and heartiness in the chorus of their voices. It had rung an echo in young Jim that had stayed with him all these years. Innocent as he had been then of the daily struggle to survive, it had come home to him clearly that they were each singing of real things—each giving thanks for the bounty of root and vine, vegetables and fruits, they had sowed, raised and harvested, to eke out their slender resources through the coming winter months.
There was something similar now in the atmosphere of those who had jammed into the chapel—and those clustered outside at the door. Jim at last realized why Geronde had been so determined to have a Mass to follow her marriage. The marriage itself was hardly more than a commercial transaction. This, here and now, was what gave the achievement of marriage all of its real meaning and memorability.
Jim tried another glance at Geronde, but still he saw only the unharmed side of her face. The other side was still turned away from him.
Behind, he heard those who had been able to crowd into the chapel, stirring and occasionally whispering to each other. They fell silent as the priest, facing the altar and the crucifix above it, began a fresh paragraph in Latin.
For a moment his conscious attention had been lost in memory. For a moment the Latin was not understandable. Then he was caught up by what was being said, and he was following it once more. The priest was already into the first of two blessings on the married couple—this one a blessing on the bride, in the heightened atmosphere of the chapel, the music of its words caught all his attention.
"…respke propius super hanc famulam tuam…" the priest was saying, "…look in Your mercy on this Your handmaid who is now joined in wedlock and implores protection from You. May the yoke of love and peace be on her… may she be dear to her husband like Rachel, wise like Rebecca, long-lived and faithful like Sarah… doctinis caelibus erudita. May she be well taught in heavenly lore. May she be fruitful in offspring… may they both see their children's children to the third and fourth generation, and reach the old age they desire. Through the name of Our Lord."
The priest went on to the consecration of the Host, and the congregation seemed to hold its breath as an acolyte rang a small bell three times. They continued in the same powerful concentration as the priest prayed, unheard by them, to consecrate the bread. He knelt on one knee, holding it, then rose, facing the altar and lifting it up at arms-length for an extended moment, that the people might see it. He placed it in a small golden dish on the altar, knelt again, and turned to the consecration of the wine in a silver chalice.
The audience breathed once more as the wine was consecrated. The wine was out of sight in the chalice, but the bread was the visible, living miracle they had been waiting to see.
The priest then partook of the wine and bread himself, and after, gave it in turn to the acolytes. Finally, he turned to give the consecrated bread to Brian and Geronde as they knelt on the steps.
Only they received it. He turned his back once more, ate and drank what remained of the wine and bread, that none of the consecrated Host might be left over, then washed the chalice that had held the wine.
He gave one more blessing specifically to the bride and groom. Then, facing the congregation, he said a single brief prayer and, making a sweeping sign of the cross, said the final words of the Mass.
"Benedicat vos omnipotens Deus, Pater et Films et Spiritus Sanctm."
"… May God almighty bless you, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen."
The Mass was over.
It was almost with a sense of shock that Jim realized there was no more to be said or done, and they were all about to leave the chapel. He turned about with the rest of the wedding party to wait for the few moments it took for those who had been behind them to clear the way by getting out of the chapel door.
He saw some of the women softly crying, and was startled—though by this time he should know better than to be so—by seeing an almost equal number of the men weeping quietly as well. The moment of the lifted bread had been one of great emotion, and males of this time gave free vent to their emotions—all emotions.
Outside, finally, at first the new, low, wintry sunlight, shining directly in his eyes, blinded him. So, half-seeing, he blundered forward to join the others in both wedding parties, now mixed together as they moved toward the Great Hall door and the wedding feast waiting for them there.
Abruptly he realized that now, for the first time, he was next to Geronde on a side that enabled him to see the cheek that had been hidden from him until now. He glanced quickly at it. The scar was still there, clearly sunlit, still on her face.
Chapter Forty-Seven
The Great Hall echoed with high voices and good cheer. After the emotional solemnity of the Mass, this was the happy time of celebration of the marriage, in a joyful clamor of voices and clatter of spoons and eating knives.
Silent at the High Table with Brian and Geronde, Jim felt sick.
"What is it?" whispered Angie, at his side.
"Tell you later," he whispered back, and made a heroic effort to smile, drink and talk happily like everyone else.
To cover up the way he was feeling after seeing the scar still there, he made an effort to fall into conversation with the priest, next to him at table on his right. Manners required he should do so anyway. He had never seen the priest before today, and he now discovered the other was to be addressed as "Sir William," a courtesy title required by the fact that he was not a member of a particular religious order—for whom the name of "Father" was reserved.
Sir William had the chair next to him, on the other side from Angie. The man of the cloth was between him and Geronde, with Brian just beyond her. Somewhat to his surprise, he found the priest to be an unusually intelligent, obviously highly educated man, only a little older than Geronde.
Out of his ecclesiastical robes, Sir William was dressed like a scholar, in a houpeland—a sort of ancestor of the loose, long academic robe Jim was familiar with in his own time, with wide sleeves.
He was a lean, calm man, who—as had Jim himself under the different circumstances of the future—had originally intended to teach at the university he had attended. But he had found the call of religious service stronger. He had been ordained by the Archbishop of Oxford and, after getting a letter from Geronde, who had heard of him through friends and written, had taken up his duties at Malvern.
William had been attracted by the position and found his attraction justified. In addition to his priestly duties, he acted as a secular advisor, and someone for Geronde to talk to and l
earn from. He could be useful in a multitude of concerns with the staff and guests. He liked his religious duties as castle priest, dealing closely with an ever-changing household of servants and men-at-arms.
Although ordained by the Archbishop of Oxford, as he explained to Jim, he was, of course, now responsible to the Bishop of Bath and Wells, and would remain so as long as he was in that Bishop's diocese.
Their talk took Jim completely out of his preoccupation with Geronde's still-existing scar—until he found his attention pulled away by their early loss of the King—Sir Straw—who had been seated at the table's far end. During the wedding outside, the King had been steadily drinking hot mulled wine, brought him by a servant, as an additional specific to deal with the cold and windy day. During the Mass, of course, there was no drinking—even by a King. But once in the Great Hall with the food, he had made up for lost time.
In earlier years his capacity had been legendary. It was still respectable, but age had nibbled away at it for some decades now. So at the table he had become sleepy and had needed to be escorted by his knights up to his suite of rooms—undoubtedly, literally carried up the long flight of steps—accompanied and watched over by both the Prince and Joan, who slipped away from the table to go with him.
This gave the others more room to spread out in the empty chairs, and since this was Brian and Geronde's—in particular Geronde's—hour of glory, those two were in no hurry to call their dinner over and leave.
A couple of hours later, however, when the arrow slits in the walls of the hall were showing nothing but darkness outside, the dinner had reached the point where it began to seem sensible for Brian and Geronde to retire to the Solar, their first-night bridal chamber, in preparation for those who would crowd it to witness their bedding. The uproar in the hall was at a proper pitch and the general mood was just about to exceed a safe level of merriment. Brian and Geronde slipped off to their wedding bed.
"Slipped off," of course, was a polite way of saying it. Everyone in the Great Hall had been watching and waiting for this moment, and after a short, decorous wait, a cheerful, mostly male, more or less inebriated tail of visitors followed up the steep tower stairs. The least drunk among them made their ascent on the outside, unprotected end of each step, to make sure those less steady on their feet did not spoil the occasion by the splash of a body on the stone floor, far below.
Carried candles lit up the interior of the tower and created dancing shadows, and the tower itself was full of echoing voices. Jim had been in witnessing groups like this before, at several earlier weddings—he had little choice in the matter, since he was expected to be a leader, due to his rank and the fact that Malencontri was the only real castle in the district. Some of the better-off neighbors had homes that could generously be referred to as castles by their friends—strongly fortified, but small compared to Malencontri—but none owned the equivalent of Malencontri's tall, encircling curtain wall.
Therefore, Jim believed he knew what to expect.
When those who were not too drunk had been admitted to the Solar, even that room was jammed by the number who wanted to be among the obligatory witnesses to such an important bedding. A burly neighbor was acting as door guard to keep those too gone in alcohol from entering.
Those excluded, however, were allowed to crowd about beyond the open door, and tried to raise their voices above those within. All this Jim had seen before. But this time he noticed a distinct difference.
The jokes were more restrained—less barbed, less skirting the edge of bawdiness. They were, if the word could be made to apply, almost "gentle." It was perfectly true that this witnessing of the bedding of the just-married couple, required by Church canon law for a legal marriage, was effectively licensed, and there was nothing to stop them from being downright rowdy if they wished. True, not all such witnessings were so, at some everybody behaved with decorum—sometimes even with forbidding solemnity.
But these were country gentry. They had grown up with many of the ways of their own tenants and servants, whose behavior at a marriage ceremony had its roots in pagan times, when from start to finish this was an occasion for unbridled fun. At a time in which the most often-quoted phrase Jim heard from his staff was "Old ways are best!" there could be a strong tendency to let themselves go.
But not this time. They had taken their time—or rather the more sober ones leading, including Jim, had taken their time—forcing a slow climb of the stairs. So when they all finally entered the temporary bridal chamber, Brian's wedding finery was piled loosely on a chair on one side of the bed, while he himself was out of sight behind the tightly drawn bed-curtains.
The temporary little tent in which Geronde had been helped to disrobe by female servants was standing with its flaps wide open to show that not only was she through using it, but that she would be in bed, out of sight behind the bed-curtains with Brian now. Even her wedding garb had been put away by servants, who themselves were no longer in sight.
The witnesses did not take this amiss. It had happened before in their experience.
But to Jim's surprise, when the usual loud-voiced witticisms began to fly, they were all—without exception—no worse than what the fourteenth century would consider parlor jokes, quite fit for mixed company among the gentry.
In fact, they were almost too gentle. Jim, in the front rank facing the bed, began to worry that this was a disarming tactic before some country-style sort of prank was to be sprung on the newlyweds. Secretly he activated his dragon hearing, far more sensitive than his human ability in that respect, and strained over the noise around him to hear if anything like a prank was being suspected by Brian and Geronde.
It took him a few moments to focus down on whatever sound might be coming from inside the bed-curtains.
"What…?" Brian was whispering groggily.
His falling asleep was not unexpected to Jim, seeing that his friend—at Jim's instigation—had ended by spending all the previous night at vigil in the chapel. He would naturally be overwhelmingly sleepy after that, particularly with food and drink inside him.
"Forgive me, sweeting," Geronde's whisper answered, with a tenderness Jim had never heard in her voice before, "I didn't want to wake you—"
"Nonsense!" Brian's whisper was stronger. "Awake now, and should be. What is it, my honey-love? Do you—"
"Not yet… but I don't weigh enough to make the bedstrings creak by myself. That is all Holy Church requires, you know, and they will not leave until they hear it. I want to be alone with you."
Jim abandoned his dragon hearing, embarrassed at having spied on them, but glad he had done it. If there had been some prank in prospect as he had feared, he could, forewarned, have nipped it in the bud.
He was no Sir William, with the weight and powers of the Church behind his words. But he was a magickian, and a small show of warning magick would have been enough to halt any pranksters in midstride, reminding them he was there, and it would go ill with them if they tried what they were thinking of doing.
Inside the curtains, Geronde evidently allowed the witnesses' jollity to continue to flow for about another five minutes. Then the bed strings gave an audible creak from inside the curtains, the joking faded off, and the witnesses began to make a relatively decorous departure, again with the more sober ones herding any tempted to linger.
Jim was the last one out—in fact, he was the only member of the wedding parties present—Angie had not come along, and neither Dafydd nor Danielle had followed the crowd—it was his duty to be so. Outside, the corridor was empty, except for the on-duty servant and man-at-arms.
He headed down to the room that had been Brian and Geronde's and was the temporary residence for Angie and himself tonight.
It was a small room after the expanse of the Solar. But because he was who he was, another pair of on-call servant and man-at-arms were standing outside its door. And when he stepped inside, he found that an affectionate, or perhaps very rank-conscious, Malencontri staff had done thei
r best to make the little space as Solar-like as possible for their lord and lady.
The room shone with cleanliness. Somehow they had found—or, thinking ahead—had built a larger bed for Angie and himself. A wardrobe from the Solar was crammed into one corner, and a brisk fire was blazing merrily, with the long arm of a hob set up next to it and the kettle in which their tea was normally boiled singing to itself.
Best of all, Angie was already there. Unfortunately, so also was Joan of Kent. The two of them had clearly been sitting there, talking. In courtesie, however, Joan should now rise and withdraw.
"Oh, Jim," said Angie herself, rising from her own chair to meet him. "Joan's been waiting for a chance to speak to both of us—but mainly you. Do you want some tea?"
Jim did want a cup of tea, but not to drink while in conversation with anyone but Angie, and then only to settle all else he had been eating and drinking at the banquet just past.
"I guess not," he said. "I'm glad to see you, Lady Joan."
But Joan was already on her own feet now and coming towards him.
"Jim, dear Jim!" she said, warmly, "we have been at our baptismal names for some time now, you and I. Will you take it amiss if I now address you in the most closely familiar form of your name? Surely, on this last occasion only I might venture on that liberty?"
Jim was about to make some stiff, polite, very definite refusal, but it stuck in his throat.
"It's good of you to want to do that," he said, "and believe me, I appreciate it. But if you'll forgive me, in all this world there is no one but my wife—excepting magickians like Carolinus, who are a class apart—who calls me 'Jim,' and I'm the only one who calls Angie, Angie. But if you would greatly wish it, at this moment…"
"No, no. I understand, James," said Joan. "Of course! How could I not? I will not intrude. You shall always be 'James' to me, in my mind as on my lips."
"That's all right…" began Jim, feeling guilty, but she interrupted.
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