Staff leaned down to kiss her. They embraced each other and then the beaming Whitmans. It seemed like a dream. She was his wife and little Catherine had a loving father, though it might be months before she could be told. They could never take Staff away from her the way they had her firstborn, her pride and even her body. Now, now it was all hers to keep!
They signed the huge parish registry as lord and lady and sat in the tiny room which served as an office while Father Robert inked in their names on their official marriage parchment on a shaky table.
“I fear greatly for the holy church, my lord,” the priest said directly to Staff in an abrupt change from the small talk he had been pursuing. “Do you understand? Is there anything you could say to reassure me?”
“I am sorry, father,” Staff answered, looking directly at the pale man. “The latest act of Parliament forbidding direct appeals to Rome is only a first step. I am sorry, but you no doubt read the times rightly.”
“Yes,” he said only, and bent his head to his lettering. Then he added under his breath, “I have prayed that these terrible happenings might be an indication of our Lord’s Second Coming, but I fear our earthly king is only misguided and hardly the Antichrist. Is it true the one they call ‘The King’s Great Concubine’ has so besotted his soul that he would kill the Holy Church to keep her? Spanish Catherine is queen anointed and true church folk know it well.”
Mary gave a tiny gasp, and the priest’s eyes sought hers. “I am sorry, Lady Stafford. I did not know where your sympathies would lie, and I should not have spoken so. But I am only a priest of a small village and, therefore, I am not afraid to say what my soul would have me say.”
“You are fortunate then, indeed, Father Robert, and I wish you safety in the times ahead,” Staff said.
“Thank you for your concern, but that is the Lord’s business. I shall tend the relics and pray over the graves and nourish the little flock and leave the rest—including our king and court—to Him. That is the Lord’s business too.”
“Yes, Father. It comforts me to think of it that way,” Mary said honestly. “And you may be assured that the king is not the Antichrist.”
“Perhaps not, lady, but some sort of evil is coming for a fall. Mark my words, evil only corrupts itself everlastingly and it will be rooted out.” He stood with his thin hands on his little desk. “Go your way now and pax vobiscum.”
“Thank you, father,” Staff said and left a bag of coins on the rickety table which nearly tottered under his touch.
The setting winter sun was etching great black shadows on the church as they left. The graves of the village forefathers looked like snowy miniature houses, and the first touch of eventide wind whistled in the carved entryway. Rows of icicles dripped from the carved eaves like jagged teeth of a stone monster waiting to devour whoever ventured within. Mary turned to imprint the little church in her memory, but it suddenly loomed behind dark and lonely, and she turned back wrapping her warm cloak about her.
Though the Whitmans had planned to serve Staff and Mary a fine wedding supper in the privacy of their room, the newly married couple insisted that they eat with the Whitmans at their hearth in the hall. They raised many toasts, laughed and reminisced and the four Whitman children sat wide-eyed by the blazing fire, in wonderment at having so fine a lord and lady eating at table with their parents. Mary cuddled three-year-old Jennifer on her lap, remembered little Catherine at that age and dreamed of the children she would bear Staff someday, but not, hopefully, until they saw fit to tell the court and her family of their marriage and could go to Wivenhoe. She never wished to attempt to raise a son or daughter in the emotional confines of the court again.
“We will make this last toast, then, to a sound night’s winter sleep,” Staff was saying with his goblet aloft again. He winked at Mary and, to her dismay, she could feel a blush spread over her neck and cheeks. The fire was entirely too warm and the wine lightly touched her face and mind with laughter.
They mounted the stairs together, and she turned back shyly to wave at the beaming little family of Master Whitman. She felt every bit a first-time bride even though she had been possessed by far too many men, and the Whitmans would be shocked to know of her unhappy past.
“I much prefer this to the screaming and running and undressing at court,” she observed quietly as he swung open the door to their room.
“You will never know how much I suffered that night, lass.”
“What night?”
“The night you were wed at court. I heard them all tearing through the hall laughing, and I went to the stables and got raving drunk with the grooms and stable boys. Lost a good bit of money gambling, too.”
“Did you, my love? You never told me that.”