The Courtship of the Vicar's Daughter

by Lawana Blackwell

  Mercy’s flock of a dozen guineas accompanied her across the yard, clucking their usual pot-rack! sounds. The size of small chickens, they were a dark gray color with light gray speckles. “Go back!” She shooed them away from the gate lest they follow her.

  Alternating the heavy basket from the crook of one arm to the other, she walked the half mile. Mrs. Brent’s stone cottage was in a sad state of disrepair, with weeds choking the garden, a shutter hanging askew beside an upstairs window, and broken shingles on the roof. Mercy hated to think that Elliott was as lazy as her brothers, but she didn’t recall his allowing things to go to pieces when Mrs. Brent was up and about. If she could spend more time here, she would be willing to attempt some of the repairs. But her father already complained enough about her leaving her chores to make the daily visit down the lane.

  Janet, who seemed to be more conscientious than her husband, answered the door. “You’re so dear to visit her, Miss Sanders,” she said, greeting Mercy with a smile. She was a softly rounded young woman with soot-colored hair and a jutting chin.

  Mercy glanced at the staircase and lowered her voice. “How is she today?”

  “The same—perhaps a little worse,” Janet whispered. “Would you like to go on up?”

  “Yes,” she replied and scooped the jar of pickled beets from the basket before handing it to Janet. The first bedroom from the upstairs landing was Mrs. Brent’s. A rock the size of a teapot kept the door propped open so that Janet could listen for her call.

  “I thought I heard your voice, Mercy,” Mrs. Brent said. She lay propped on pillows against an iron bedstead, so frail that it appeared a mild wind could sweep her away like a fallen leaf. Palsy, Doctor Rhodes had diagnosed, had robbed her of the ability to walk and now was moving its way up through her arms.

  “I brought you some beets,” Mercy said, leaning forward to kiss the wrinkled forehead.

  “You did?”

  She held the jar up so that the sunlight slanting through the window would touch the glass.

  “Look how they sparkle like rubies,” Mrs. Brent breathed, lifting a trembling hand to touch the jar.

  “There, there—don’t tire yourself.” Mercy eased the hand back to her friend’s chest and took a seat in the bedside chair. “I just hope your digestion can still bear them.”

  “Oh, I can bear them all right. Do you think there will be pickled beets in heaven, Mercy?”

  “Mrs. Brent … don’t talk that way.”

  “Oh, forgive me,” the gentle soul replied. “I don’t want to cause you sadness. But you must understand that I’m looking forward to that place, dear child. Remember, we weren’t created for this world.”

  A lump came to Mercy’s throat. “It’s just that I’m going to miss you so much.”

  “But only for a little while.” Mrs. Brent’s faded blue eyes were shining now. “But here … hold my hand. We’ve plans to make.”

  Memories of sitting at her dying mother’s bedside assailed Mercy as she wrapped her fingers carefully around the fragile hand. Yes, she knew that a better place awaited her friend, but such talk was so hard to hear. And deep inside she believed, though without rationale, that if plans were not made for the afterlife, then the death could not occur. If she did not love Mrs. Brent so much, she would have made some excuse and left the room.

  “First, my little herd,” the woman said, seeming not to notice her discomfort. “There are six now, counting the two calves born this spring. I want you to have them when I’m gone.”

  Mercy had to shake her head. Mrs. Brent’s cattle, named after flowers, were like the children she never had. “Mrs. Brent …”

  “They’ll not be allowed to accompany me to heaven, Mercy,” she said in a thin but firm voice. “And I know you’ll take good care of them.”

  “But Elliott and Janet …”

  “I’m leaving them the horses and wagon and whatever money is left. But they’re planning to live with Elliott’s family and hire on at the cheese factory, so there will be no place for my herd.” Beseechingly the old woman looked at Mercy. “I’m too weak to argue over this, dear. Please say you’ll take them.”

  Mercy gave her a careful squeeze of the hand. “If it will make you happy.”

  “Yes.” Letting out a sigh, Mrs. Brent lay back on her pillows to collect her breath for a moment. “The land and house go back to the squire,” she said presently. “Janet will be taking my clothes for her mother-in-law—except the nightgown I’ll be buried in, of course. Please remind her it’s the blue one.”

  “Yes, the blue one.”

  “As for the rest of my belongings—they’ve been in this house for so long that I feel as if I should leave them for whoever settles here. But I want you to take my Bible. And if there is anything else you would like to have—”

  “Mrs. Brent, I can’t talk about this anymore.” Mercy blinked the sting from her eyes.

  “Have I made you sad? I’ll stop then.” She looked up at Mercy with the most tender of expressions. “Sing to me, child?”

  “Yes, of course. What would you like to hear?”

  “Oh, you choose this time. Something about heaven?”

  “Very well.” Mercy thought for a minute, and managing to stay on key in spite of a lump in her throat, she sang one of the hymns she’d learned at chapel:

  There is a land of pure delight, where saints immortal reign,

  Infinite day excludes the night, and pleasures banish pain.

  Could we but climb where Moses stood, and view the land-

  scape o’er,

  Not Jordan’s stream, nor death’s cold flood, should fright us

  from the shore.

  Mrs. Brent’s eyes were closed as she lay back on the pillow, but her creased lips moved along with the words. Mercy completed two more verses, and then sang “Jesus, Still Lead On,” one of her friend’s particular favorites. After she was finished, she thought Mrs. Brent was asleep and wondered if she should leave, but then the faded eyes opened.

  “You’ve such a pure voice,” the woman said with a little smile. “Your babies will be so sweet tempered from listening to your lullabies.”

  Mercy felt a dull sadness at the futility of those words, but it wasn’t the appropriate time to contradict her just now. She returned the smile. “Thank you, Mrs. Brent. Now why don’t you try to sleep?”

  Mrs. Brent closed her eyes obediently, but her lips still moved. “God has told me that He’s going to send you a husband, Mercy.”

  Chapter 4

  Seated at the head of the Larkspur’s long dining room table that evening, Julia Hollis took in the homey scene before her. Savory aromas rose from plates loaded with Mrs. Herrick’s specialties and mingled with the pleasant conversation of people who had become almost family to one another.

  “Actually, they were used for weaving cloth, not for grooming,” Mr. Ellis was saying of the bone combs he and his assistant, Mr. Pitney, had uncovered in the Anwyl’s ruins today. Mr. Ellis looked every bit the archeologist with his studious gray eyes, tall, slightly stooped frame, and graying beard. “And they are not Roman, by the way.”

  “Not Roman, Mr. Ellis?” Mrs. Dearing asked from his immediate right. “But the fort is Roman, isn’t it?”

  “Oh, absolutely. But Mr. Pitney and I have come to the conclusion that there was a fortified village there sometime during the Late Iron Age—around 50 B.C., if you will. The Romans apparently leveled this village some two hundred years later to construct their fort atop the ruins.”

  “And so the combs are Celtic?” Mr. Durwin, retired founder of Durwin Stoves, asked.

  “Indeed they are. It was Mr. Pitney who established that. He has a deep abiding interest in Celtic artifacts.”

  Julia recognized that Mr. Ellis was generously attempting to draw his younger associate into the conversation. Perhaps it was his great size that contributed to Jacob Pitney’s timidity, for the dark-haired man towered above everyone else in the Larkspur. Big-boned he was, with ha
nds that looked as if they should be swinging a pickax at a quarry rather than handling delicate antiquities. But it was obvious that he loved his work, for his brown eyes lit up when Fiona asked him to describe how the combs were used in weaving.

  “Aren’t you hungry, Mother?” Aleda asked from Julia’s adjacent right. Julia looked down at her plate and realized her fork had been idly plowing swirls in her creamed turnips for some time now.

  “It must be the turnips,” Grace, at Aleda’s other elbow, suggested before Julia could reply. The seven-year-old had an acute dislike for the root vegetable and seemed to assume it was only a matter of time before the rest of the household came to their senses and formed the same opinion.

  Julia didn’t force her to eat them, for she could recall a similar enmity with peas when she was a young girl. “The turnips are fine,” she told Grace. “I’m still not used to having everyone here again. It’s nice.”

  “Everyone” consisted of, in order of seating beginning with her son on the left, Mrs. Hyatt and Mr. Durwin, who were to marry in September, Mrs. Dearing, who had spent some years in California gold country with her late husband, Mr. Ellis, and Miss Rawlins, author of such penny novelettes as Dominique’s Peril.

  From Grace’s right were seated Mrs. Kingston, Mr. Pitney, Fiona, and Mr. Clay. Counting Julia and her children and parlormaids, Georgette and Sarah, who were flanking the sideboard in their black alpaca gowns and white aprons, fifteen people were gathered in the room.

  Good people, Julia thought. Oh, some had their minor peculiarities, as she suspected she did herself, but she could not have imagined a more congenial group living under her roof. She became aware that Mrs. Dearing was attempting to establish eye contact and said, “Yes, Mrs. Dearing?”

  “Have you heard whether the school board’s call on the Sanderses was successful, Mrs. Hollis?”

  All eyes turned to her now. Julia shook her head. “I’m afraid I haven’t.” But as the day wore on, she had ceased worrying about her fiancé being the target of a rock, for surely she would have heard by now if he had.

  “I do pray they were able to persuade him.” Mrs. Kingston glanced at the girls at her left. “A merry-go-round would be such a novelty—why, I doubt there’s another village in Shropshire that can boast such a wonder!”

  Mrs. Dearing nodded. “It looks as if the whole outcome depends upon Mr. Sanders, doesn’t it? I avoid gossip like the plague, but from what bits and pieces I’ve heard concerning him, he cares for nothing above his cattle—not even his own children.”

  “I’ve heard that as well,” Mrs. Hyatt sighed.

  The mood of the assemblage turned somber, with the scroll clock on the chimneypiece ticking off several seconds of silence. Presently Mr. Clay, whose face betrayed an apparent struggle with some sort of emotion, said, “We can only hope Mr. Sanders was in an agreeable moo-ood.” He winced afterward. “Forgive me—I just couldn’t help myself.”

  Another silence followed, during which everyone appeared to be collecting his thoughts. Mr. Durwin was the first to speak, scrutinizing Mr. Clay unsmilingly, but with eyes that held a suspicious glint. “I suppose you find that a-moosing, Mr. Clay?”

  Now somber expressions turned to chuckles. Even Georgette and Sarah sent giggles from the sideboard. “May I give it a try?” asked Mr. Ellis.

  “But of course,” Mr. Durwin invited.

  He assumed an eloquent pose. “It would be-hoof any child to be educated.”

  “Wait—I have one!” Miss Rawlins said above the laughter that followed Mr. Ellis’s contribution. “I cud listen to you make puns for days.”

  “Thank you, Miss Rawlins.” Mr. Clay inclined his head toward the head of the table. “But wouldn’t you rather listen to Aleda play the piano?”

  The mirth that erupted fizzled out in the same breath. Before anyone could ask Mr. Clay to explain his answer, he sent Aleda a wink. “Mooo-sic.”

  It seemed a dam had been broken. An assortment of nonsense words were twittered and guffawed over—even those that weren’t quite up to mark, such as Mrs. Kingston’s “It was beast-ly of Mr. Sanders to crown poor Mr. Clay with a rock.”

  “Aren’t you going to say one, Mother?” Aleda whispered.

  “I’ve been trying to think,” Julia whispered back. “Moon is the only word I can come up with, but it hasn’t anything to do with the subject.”

  Philip turned to her, his face flushed from laughter. “May I?”

  “If you like,” she nodded, relieved that at least one person from the Hollis family would be represented. Her son turned to the others, raised a timid hand as if in school, and was soon noticed by Mrs. Hyatt.

  “Have you a good one for us, Philip?”

  “I think so.”

  “Well, let’s hear it, young man,” Mrs. Dearing urged.

  “This is udderly the funniest supper I’ve ever had,” he said, which caused Mr. Clay to roar and Mr. Ellis to remove his spectacles and wipe his eyes with his napkin. By the time dessert was served—raspberry torte with cream—everyone had settled down somewhat, though the mood was still light.

  As the lodgers moved from the room later, Mr. Clay accepted Mr. Durwin’s request for a game of draughts “for old time’s sake.” Julia suspected that he did so to give Fiona and her some time to spend together and appreciated him all the more for it. “Why don’t you show me the rest of your new wardrobe?” she asked her friend.

  “I would love to,” Fiona said, linking her arm through Julia’s. They ambled down the corridor toward the courtyard door, first stepping into the kitchen to compliment Mrs. Herrick and the kitchen maids on the meal. Inside, the women were laying the table for the servants’ supper.

  “Ah, so’s Mr. Clay does allow you out of his sight now and then,” Mrs. Herrick told Fiona, causing a shocked giggle from scullery maid Gertie and a smile from Mildred.

  “Now and then” was Fiona’s smiling reply. “I’m happy to know that the cooking here is still the best in England.”

  “Flattery will land you another dish of raspberry torte, Mrs. Clay.”

  Fiona raised a hand to her waist. “It sounds wonderful, but I’m afraid I’ve no room for it, Mrs. Herrick.”

  They stayed only a minute or two longer, for the rest of the servants had begun drifting into the kitchen for their meal. In the comfortably furnished apartment over the stables, Julia sat at Fiona’s dressing table and tried on an assortment of hats. She angled her face to study herself wearing a particularly flattering one of midnight blue felt, the brim turned up at one side and adorned with feathers and ribbons. “Is this French?”

  Standing behind her like in the old days when she used to brush Julia’s hair, Fiona nodded. “It looks stunning on you.”

  “It does?” Julia allowed Fiona to tilt the brim a bit farther down on her forehead, then looked in the mirror again. She had begun to feel pretty again in spite of her thirty-two years, for Andrew told her so every day. Her waist-length auburn hair had no gray as of yet, and her slightly freckled cheeks were still smooth. “I do look like I’m about to have tea with the Queen, don’t I?”

  “Why don’t you keep it?”

  “Oh no, I couldn’t.”

  “You could wear it to the vicarage tomorrow evening.”

  The idea was tempting. For just a few seconds, Julia relived the years when the latest Parisian fashions were something she took for granted. The richness of her clothing had been important to her then, for there was little else in her life over which she had any control. But before temptation could take too great a hold upon her, she removed the hat. “Thank you, Fiona, but I can’t.”

  “If you’re worried that Ambrose might object …”

  “No, it’s not that.” Julia sighed and tried to explain. “Most women here in Gresham can’t afford anything so fine. I don’t want to set myself apart from them.”

  She had given much thought on how she should conduct herself now that she was betrothed to a minister. There was no sin in being fashionabl
e, and she had no intention of dressing dowdy. But how could she help her husband minister to people like Mrs. Burrell if she were bedecked out in Parisian finery, when the poor woman couldn’t clothe herself or her children without parish assistance?

  “I understand,” Fiona said, which of course came as no surprise to Julia. Taking the hat and handing over another, this time a muslin morning cap, her friend said, “Then we’ll just have our own Easter parade right here. Try this one on, please.”

  Julia did as she was told. After every hat had been modeled and every gown admired, they sat on a small settee in front of the empty fireplace and propped their feet on the fender. Mr. Trumble had sent the Clays a tin of Belgium chocolate bonbons last week, and the two managed to find room for two or three each in spite of Mrs. Herrick’s torte. Fiona entertained Julia with tidbits she’d learned about the theatre, and Julia told Fiona about her wedding plans.

  And then abruptly Fiona asked, “You don’t think I’m prideful, do you?”

  Stifling a smile, Julia replied, “Are you referring to your wardrobe?”

  “It’s not that I require all that finery to be happy. Ambrose insists upon buying them for me.”

  “Fiona, there’s not a prideful bone in your body.”

  “I’m afraid I’m capable of any emotion,” she sighed. “In London we’re often approached by people who recognize my husband. I must admit it’s rather flattering being at his side. During my quiet times with God, I often have to remind myself from whence I came.”

  Julia nodded, understanding. Fiona’s origins had indeed been humble, beginning with servitude in Ireland as soon as she was old enough to labor, then marriage to a brutal man at fourteen. She ran away from her husband, now dead, four years later to emigrate to London and was hired into Julia’s household as a chambermaid. Fiona rose in position to become housekeeper of the Larkspur, but when she was twenty-six years old, her servitude became a thing of the past with her marriage to Mr. Clay.