Midsummer Night

by DEANNA RAYBOURN

  I, of course, expected rain. Not just rain, but torrential, heaving, biblical rain—the sort to set arks afloat. Everything else had gone awry, why not that? But when I awoke on Midsummer Day, the sun greeted me cordially, coaxing the dew from the grass and the early roses as a light breeze wafted the scent of charred chimney over the gardens. I stood at the window and breathed in deeply all the scents of summer, fresh grass and carp ponds and blossoming herb knots until the whole of it mingled in my head and made me dizzy. A bee floated lazily in the window and out again as if beckoning me to follow.

  No sooner had he gone than Portia arrived, announcing that Olivia had abdicated all responsibility for the wedding, pleading a migraine, and that no wedding breakfast had been arranged. I shrugged and towed her to the window. “What could it matter on such a day? There is nothing so magical as Midsummer Day in England and I will quarrel with no one today.”

  She gave me an appraising look. “I shall hold you to that in the event you do not like what I have done.” She signalled to Morag who came forward with a gown of heavy lavender silk—a gown I recognised at once.

  “That was Mother’s!”

  Portia nodded. “As soon as I wrecked your wedding gown, I thought of her portrait. I went straight up to the lumber rooms and there it was, packed away in lavender and rosemary and mint. I aired it, but I daresay it still smells of them.”

  I put my nose to the fabric smelling the herbs and something else, a bright hint of the lemon verbena scent our mother had always worn. “It is perfect.”

  “You are a trifle more slender than she was, but I’ve no doubt Morag can pin it up,” she said, hurrying to help me into it. The gown was not fashionable; Mother had been painted in it the year I was born, and the skirt was far wider than any I had ever worn. But the fabric draped beautifully, and the low basque neckline was quickly filled for the ceremony with a bit of lace like the soft edge of a cloud against the silk.

  Together Portia and Morag buttoned and pinned until it was perfect. As the finishing touch, Portia placed a wreath of lavender and myrtle on my head. “Lavender for devotion, myrtle for love,” I murmured.

  She stepped back to admire her handiwork. “You look like a very distinguished milkmaid.”

  I grinned. “Nothing better for a country wedding.” Our eyes met in the mirror, and she dropped a swift kiss to my cheek.

  “Every happiness, my love,” she whispered. “You deserve it.”

  I heard a bovine sort of snuffle behind us. “Morag, are you weeping?”

  She blew her nose into her handkerchief. “I am not. ’tis the country and all this fresh air. It is no good for a body what’s used to the city.”

  She snuffled into her handkerchief again, and I blinked back my own sudden tears. Portia handed me a handkerchief for my pocket and a nosegay of lavender and the first pink roses to carry, trailing ivy to symbolise friendship and fidelity. I wore no jewels save the pendant Brisbane had given me with its secret code—the code that had given me my first inkling that he loved me. It had not been so very long since he had given it to me, a year only; twelve leaves of the calendar torn away, a few dozen weeks from then to now. But how much change that year had wrought!

  I followed Portia out of the room and down the stairs. The family had already gone, all save Father, who waited for me in a small dog cart bedecked with flowers. Portia and Morag hurried on ahead while Father helped me into the cart, his eyes fixed upon my gown.

  “I know that gown” was all he said.

  “I hope it is all right. Portia borrowed it from the lumber room,” I began to explain. He covered my hand with his own.

  “Of all my children, you are the most like her,” he said, his voice breaking with emotion. “But never more than at this moment.”

  I swallowed hard and he thumped me on the back. “Here, now. We’ll have none of that. If anyone ought to be weeping it is I. It is not every day a belted earl sees his daughter married to a tradesman.”

  But he grinned as he said it and I smiled with him. “I mean to be happy, you know. Really happy.”

  “Good,” he said briskly. “If you are not, I shall know whom to blame.”

  He raised his hand to signal and at once the gardeners and grooms and drivers came forward, taking up the traces of the little cart to pull it to the church. It was a feudal custom, but they had all been given a pint of the publican’s best ale beforehand and were in a merry mood. They bellowed “Summer Is a-Coming In” at the top of their lungs and with painful harmonies, and I was not entirely surprised when they drove the cart into the hedges more often than they pulled it in a straight line. We arrived almost a quarter of an hour after we had planned, and Mrs. Netley was entertaining the packed church with a full-throated organ fanfare played with gusto. I paused as they gave her the signal to begin the processional and every head turned my way. She swung into “The Arrival of the Queen of Sheba,” and I nearly burst out laughing at Brisbane’s choice.

  Before I could catch my breath, I was walking down the narrow aisle, my silk skirts brushing the armfuls of flowers and herbs tied to every stall. At the altar, Uncle Fly stood, white hair at attention, robed in his vestments and beaming. My brother, Plum, stood up with Brisbane, and later I would notice he wore a violet waistcoat embroidered with white rosebuds and tiny thistles in honour of Brisbane’s Scottish birth.

  But I saw none of it then. Not the flowers, nor the waistcoat, nor the Harpies nodding just behind Aunt Hermia and Portia. I saw only Brisbane standing tall and solemn at the end of the aisle, waiting.

  I went to stand next to him, and he gave me his hand, warm and strong.

  “I am sorry I kept you waiting,” I murmured.

  “I have waited for you the whole of my life,” he replied softly. “What is another minute more?”

  I ought to have cried then, but I did not. I smiled instead. We exchanged our vows, the old Duke of Aberdour shouting all the while that he could not hear. He kept demanding we repeat our responses until finally Brisbane turned to him and shouted, “I just promised to endow her with all my worldly goods, now be quiet!” To which the old man replied, “I didn’t know you had any worldly goods.” The crowd laughed uproariously in response, but in truth, I was marrying a man whose fortune might not have been quite as considerable as my own, but thanks to a providential set of circumstances, he was well able to afford the slender silver band set with diamonds that he slid onto my finger. He kissed me, rather more warmly than Uncle Fly had expected, but he lifted his hand in blessing just the same, and we walked hand in hand out into the morning sunlight.

  Just outside the church, a crowd had assembled, and to my astonishment, I saw it was the Gypsies, dressed in their best and waiting patiently.

  Marigold and Alma stepped forward, Alma smiling as she came to kiss first me, then Brisbane. Marigold hung back a moment, her expression wary. But Alma gave her a meaningful nod and Marigold cleared her throat.

  “There is a wedding breakfast if you’ll come,” she said gruffly. She turned, her scarlet skirts flaring behind her as she led the way. From behind I heard the shocked murmurs of my family and I turned, but before I could speak, Plum raised his voice.

  “That is a very jolly idea. A wedding breakfast as a picnic! And you could not ask better weather for it. Well done, brother,” he said, clapping Brisbane on the shoulder.

  My new husband turned to look at me, one black brow quirked upwards.

  “Did you do this?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “I am as mystified as you. I do not know what moved them to do this.”

  But he was pleased, deeply so, I could see from the warmth of his expression.

  “I can think of no better way to celebrate than with your kin,” I told him.

  “That is because you’ve never eaten hedgehog,” he murmured against my ear. “Now, then, don’t look so frightened. I’m certain you will get the best bits, being the bride and all.”

  At the look on my face his lips twitched a littl
e, and I pinched his arm. “We have been married all of two minutes and already you are amusing yourself at my expense.”

  “Amusing myself with you,” he corrected.

  Behind us the Harpies were still muttering behind their fans, but Portia and Aunt Hermia took them firmly in hand. My brother Benedick’s two eldest children, Tarquin and Perdita, led the way, skipping along the path to the river meadow and dancing around us while one of the Gypsy lads played a sprightly tune on his tin whistle. It was a motley bunch who gathered in the meadow. The Roma, dressed in their finest, put the villagers and my own family to shame. The women wore their wealth in the coins that dripped from ears and necks while the men sported shirts of such brilliant whiteness I overheard Plum asking one of them how they managed it as he gazed ruefully at his own less pristine cuffs.

  Marigold had called it a breakfast, but it was a feast. The men had assembled trestle tables fairly groaning with dishes—simple salads of herbs and greens gathered from the fields, and fish taken from the river not an hour before lay crisp and golden on white platters. Loaves of bread had been bought from the village baker and sliced to dip into honey still in the comb or laden with new cheese. Fat chickens and an enormous ham had been procured and roasted until the juices ran fragrantly. My brother Benedick glanced at the ham and gave me a wink before turning to the plates of jellies and delectable pastries beckoning from the shade. Just beyond, another table held a cake—not the impressive confection Olivia had planned but a good, honest fruitcake bursting with sultanas and sour cherries, rich with spices and covered in marzipan.

  “How on earth did they manage it?” I asked Brisbane. “They haven’t ovens for making the pastries, nor larders to cool the jellies.”

  He smiled. “Surely you of all people should know never to underestimate the ingenuity of a Rom.”

  I kissed him and the feast commenced. For hours we ate and drank—not vintage champagne but strong country cider whose fragrant charms went straight to the head in the warm weather. We cut the cake to cheers from the guests, and after all had eaten their fill, a few of the Gypsy lads took up their instruments—guitars and violins and a flute—and began to play traditional melodies. The village men scurried off to fetch their own instruments, and when they returned—bearing their horns and fiddles and drums and even a small elderly harpsichord for Mrs. Netley, they began to play together—ballads and dances from years gone by. Brisbane sat with his back to the tree and I sheltered in his arm, sitting upon his coat on the grass. I watched the villagers unbend as the music played on, coaxing and encouraging. The Gypsies would always be interlopers to them, but for that afternoon, the happiness of the occasion and the familiar tunes bound us all together. To make a point, Portia walked briskly to a young Gypsy lad, Marigold’s son, and asked him to dance. He led her through the figures of a country dance as Plum partnered Alma, and before the song had ended and another begun, most of the guests had stood up to dance, villager with Gypsy, family with country. I felt Brisbane’s chest give a rumble underneath my cheek as he laughed.

  “What amuses you?”

  He nodded towards the dancers, red-faced and puffing but smiling as they hurled themselves about under the warm golden midsummer sun. “They do. Look closely, my love, I doubt we shall ever see gorgios and Roma in such harmony again in our lifetimes.”

  I stood and put out my hand. “So long as you and I dance together we will.”

  He rose and swept me into his arms, leading me straight into the centre of the throng for the next dance.

  We danced for hours, stopping occasionally to eat again or drink more of the potent cider, and it was only when the rays of the midsummer sun began to slant low that I went to find Marigold. She was sitting on the steps of her vardo, chin in her hand. She looked up as I approached.

  “You have complaints?” she asked sharply.

  I said nothing. I merely bent and kissed her on the cheek. She jerked, startled, but when I pulled back, she was smiling a little.

  “You are happy then?”

  “Very. This is so much better than lobster patties and champagne and aspic.”

  She gave me a searching look. “If you did not want such a thing, why did you plan it?”

  I shrugged. “My sisters rather took over the planning of it all and I went along with it.”

  She looked me over from head to toe before shaking her head. The coins in her ears jingled as she did so, a low, throaty sound like the tolling of an old bell. “You are not that woman. Not anymore.”

  “What woman?”

  “The one who meekly does as she is told. You are something new, a creation of your own making now, an invention of your own imagination. You are not what they made of you,” she said, nodding towards the little clusters of my family and friends. “You are not Julia Grey, the child of the aristocrat. You are not Julia Grey, widow of a bad man. You are Julia Brisbane now. The question is: What will you make of her?”

  There was a challenge in her tone, and I did not entirely like it. I lifted my chin. “I am sure I don’t know. But I will find out.”

  She considered this, then shrugged. “You may or you may not. But you have already made something of him that he was not before,” she added, flicking a glance to where Brisbane was chatting with Plum, his head thrown back in laughter. “He carries his past on his back, like a pedlar with his pack. His burdens are so heavy, and yet with you, I think he might learn to shed them, if only a little.”

  “I mean to help him to shed them all,” I told her stoutly.

  She smiled, almost pleasantly. “Then you have much to learn yet about men. If you can help him at all, you will have done more than anyone else.”

  She paused and I ventured a question. “Did anything I said cause you to do this? For Brisbane, I mean.”

  The smile broadened. “It was your brother, the one called Plum. He came with Mr. Benedick from the Home Farm to find us on the London road. They came with a pig and the chickens and a purse of gold to sweeten their proposition.”

  I gaped at her. “Of all the mercenary—”

  She held up a hand. “I took the pig and the chicken, and yes, the money, too. It is summer now, but winter comes and we will be glad of the gold when it does. But when they found us on the road, we were not heading to London. We were on our way back here.”

  I was suffused with a quiet joy. “You were coming back?”

  “Yes,” she said, her manner grudging. “Perhaps some of what you said is true. Perhaps just for today I can think kindly on him as my nephew and wish him well.” She broke off, and when she spoke again, it was with a fresh briskness. “It is time for the past to be the past,” she said, rising and dusting off her hands. “It is time to look to the east. A new day comes for all of us. And yesterday must be buried with the dead.”

  As bridal talks go, it was not the most uplifting, but I was grateful to see Marigold unbending in her resentments. They had not made full peace with each other, but he later thanked her and she accepted his kiss. She even went so far as to sketch a brief gesture of blessing over us before we darted through a gap in the hedge and ran away.

  I held Brisbane’s hand tightly. “This is appallingly rude, you know. We are supposed to let them send us off.”

  “Half of them are too tipsy to stand and the rest are plotting to throw me in the river fully dressed. Do you really want to spend your wedding night helping me wring out my favourite coat?” he asked.

  “Brisbane?”

  “Yes, my love?”

  “Run faster.”

  He paused. “Hear that?”

  We stood for the space of a heartbeat before I heard it, the bright unmistakable call of the cuckoo.

  “This is the day the cuckoo changes his song,” my husband said. “Gypsies say if you run and count the cuckoo’s cries, you will add one year to your life for each cry you hear.”

  Together we clasped hands and ran, counting cuckoo songs and laughing as the last of the golden rays of the midday sun
fell gently over the land.

  Chapter Seven

  Get thee a good husband, and use him as he uses thee.

  —All’s Well That Ends Well, I.i.221

  He led me to the Rookery, the little house my father had given me. It belonged to the estate but had been sorely neglected until Father had it repaired and refurbished for my enjoyment. Aquinas had opened it up, airing the house and unshrouding the furniture from the dust sheets, and maids had dusted from beams to polished floors, spreading fresh linen upon the wide four-poster bed. The windows had been thrown open to the summer breezes, and as Brisbane pressed me down onto the bed, I smelled the roses at the casement surrendering their perfume at the end of the long day. He put his hands through my hair and the lavender wreath, broken to bits by the exertions of dancing, scattered like so much confetti across the sheets. What followed...well, there are words to describe such a thing, but they are known only to poets. I believed I loved him before that night; I believed I understood what passes between a man and a woman before that night. I believed I knew all there was of intimacy and pleasure and passion and perfect satisfaction.

  I was wrong. I went into the room the woman I had always been, but I emerged the next day exactly as Marigold had described—a new creation. I mourned the loss of the beautiful pale violet corset Brisbane had destroyed in his haste, but it was the only casualty of his loss of control, and as I stared mournfully at the shreds of French lace, I marvelled that I had driven him to take it apart with his bare hands. There was power in him, but gentleness as well, and he had given me both.

  We spent a few days in seclusion at the Rookery before embarking upon a wedding journey that saw us on a slow tour of the Mediterranean, tarrying wherever we fancied along the way. The summer was hot, but the Mediterranean was deliciously comfortable in the warmth of late October and a sharp breeze rolled off the coast of Africa, carrying with it the scent of spices and antique lands. We were utterly relaxed as the ship drew into the port of Alexandria, the last leg of our honeymoon. I was eager to climb a pyramid and sail the Nile, and the sights and sounds of that first moment on African soil remain with me still. The pedlars, shouting their wares of silks and fruit and donkey rides; the muezzins calling the faithful to prayer, the children laughing and the occasional sharp chatter of a monkey. Alexandria was teeming, tiny sailboats darting dangerously near the great steamships laden with cargo and passengers bound for strange lands.