God and the Wedding Dress Read online

  Quietly he folded the rich gown back into the box in which it had come from London.

  He observed that the tailor stood aside while the box was being packed; he was already infected, if not with the plague, with fear. But when the Rector had finished his task, returned the wrappings to their place and knotted the cords, he said quietly to the tailor:

  “You must help me with this, it is too large for one man to carry and I do not want to involve others. You have already had the garment in the house and it can do you no further harm. Besides, it is shut away again in the box and it will be safe enough until it is opened.”

  “How do we know that, sir?” asked the tailor, reasonably enough, as the Rector was forced to admit. “It may have infected dozens from London to Derby.”

  “Did you not know,” asked the Rector sadly, “that there was the plague in London? Could you not employ more discretion?”

  The man replied uneasily that he had had tales of this and that, even of the sickness in Derby, but nothing had ever come to Eyam. The air was too pure, the place too isolated. Besides, what were these invisible elements that could be enclosed in a box of garments and remain vital for so many weeks?

  William Mompesson could not answer this question himself. All he could say, was:

  “It has been proved that infection can travel in this manner. Yet do not be unduly alarmed. It may be that the lad has some other sickness. Take the box with me and we will carry it up to the moors. Make haste, for I would not attract attention, and it is early yet.”

  Still deeply troubled, but obeying his superior without hesitation, George Vickers ran upstairs, completed his attire, peeped nervously in at the invalid, who he reported was now in a placid state and seemed asleep. He came down again to the parlour where William Mompesson stood thoughtfully by the London box.

  The two men took it up between them and carried it up the village street away from the green, the stream and the lych-gate.

  Some of the revellers were still abroad, most of the miners had taken a holiday to-day, although the wake was over. Women were sweeping doorsteps and shaking clothes out of windows; there was much litter about.

  And the Rector, before there was a chance of being observed, turned behind the cottages and, taking a roundabout way through the rocky dells, came out on the wide moor.

  He had taken the precaution to bring a flint and tinder from the tailor’s shop and thought that he would burn the wedding dress on the old heathen altar, not only because of his inner fantasy to sacrifice this evil thing to evil gods, but because he feared in this dry weather to set the heath alight.

  The tailor approached this spot, marked by the two long barrows, one of which had been broken open, with some trepidation. He declared that around this place, which was considered by the inhabitants of Eyam as accursed, Gabriel’s hounds had been heard to howl.

  The Rector asked sadly — what gross superstition was this?

  But the man replied stubbornly that the Hounds of the Archangel Gabriel ran across the moor howling when any disaster or the death of a notable person was about to take place. And he added that these infernal dogs were inhabited by the souls of unchristened children.

  “It is the wind and the loneliness that create such a fancy,” said William Mompesson. He looked at the gray, upright stones and the flat stones in the centre. The spot was awe-inspiring, even to the educated, and had he not already resolved that it would be blasphemous for him to doubt the existence of devils and angels? Perhaps this simple, ignorant man beside him was in the right of it, perhaps hell-hounds did caper across the lonely moor?

  Well started on his subject now, the fearful Vickers was full of stories of prognostications of death; trying to remember if he had lately observed any that might foretell his own end.

  “That mound,” he said, “is considered the grave of an evil man. You can see the pile of stones on it, sir. You know in ancient times they used to cast stones on the graves of wicked men as often as they passed them. And a great urn was found there, too, and it was hoped that it was full of gold.”

  “Let that be,” said the Rector, placing the box on the large plain stone in the midst of the upright monoliths. “There is nothing but ashes in these urns, and no gold. Come, strike the flint and steel and light the tinder.”

  “It goes to my heart to do so,” lamented the tailor, as the Rector unstrapped the box and cast the wedding dress out. “It is the most beautiful piece of work that I ever cast eyes on. And Lyons satin, worth a guinea a yard.” He looked cautiously round him, and added in a whisper: “Here they come to gather May dew, which makes weak children strong. And now I think of it,” he said, scratching his ear, “I believe that it is the plague and that young Fulwood will not recover. For I saw a white cricket not a fortnight ago, and bees sitting on a dead branch.”

  Seeing that it was impossible to obtain any service from the distracted man, Mr. William Mompesson struck the flint and steel himself, and when the flame sprang up set light to a piece of paper and cast it down on what should have been Bessie Carr’s wedding dress.

  There was a slow wind blowing that shook the tall, fine grasses and added to the Rector’s sensitive imagination, to the intense loneliness of the desolate scene.

  Tree-covered hills enclosed the wide moor all round, the close-growing heather had lost its vivid bloom and was now the colour of dried blood amid the clusters of orange-stemmed ferns and the mossy patches set with harebells.

  The Rector wondered how long it was since the flames had burnt up on the sacrificial stone. The dry, crisp muslins and buckrams of the trimmings and stiffenings soon caught fire and, fanned by the uneasy wind that seemed to come from the clenched fist of God, Mompesson thought, the flames crept down the length of white satin, over the silver flounces and braidings.

  “It is money burning,” cried the tailor, brought out of his fit of musing by the destruction of the beautiful dress. “Twenty pounds’ or more worth of good money! And who knows if it is only for a whim or a fantasy?”

  “It is a necessary precaution,” replied William Mompesson.

  The sight was to him curious and even horrible; the flames, pale in the sunlight, waved here and there in the delicate breeze; there were fine spirals of smoke against the grey upright monoliths.

  William Mompesson resolved to try to pray. He told the tailor to return home, to wash his hands and face in vinegar and to burn some cinnamon, if he had it, before his door and before the chamber of the sick boy. And he added that he would, on his return, go to the Rectory and fetch some physic or have it sent to Vickers’s cottage. But above all, he bade the tailor keep his counsel and not let anyone know that there was a chance that the plague had come to Eyam.

  The man was not sorry to return to his familiar places; he was ill at ease on the lonely heath amidst the stones that formed the heathen temple dedicated to who knew what hideous devils. Nor was he greatly reassured by the grave, preoccupied manner of the Rector.

  So he turned and went quickly towards the village, looking now and then over his shoulder as if he indeed feared that Gabriel’s Hounds might be upon his track. But there was no sound to mar the sweetness of the bright morning, save that faint rustle of the breeze in the leaves of the mountain ash, a few pale clouds curled up in the blue heights and cast slowly-moving shadows over the heath.

  And William Mompesson tried to pray. He raised his eyes and clasped his hands as the wind stirred his hair. He tried to reach his God, to find out what was required of him, to get into mystical communication with his Maker. And he prayed, too, that the plague might not come to Eyam and that those he loved might be spared from this and other scourges.

  But he was not satisfied with his prayers; for even while he cast his eyes upward and pressed his hands upon his breast, he had been too conscious of the material things about him, of the flaming wedding dress upon the sacrificial stone, of the light and shade across the blowing grass, of the wind that went past
his ears with a delicate sound, of the hills that ringed him in, of the great emptiness that encompassed him.

  The wedding dress flared out. There was nothing left on the stone but a few charred fragments and some strips of whalebone and twisted wires.

  William Mompesson turned these over with his cane and waited until the last spark had died down, then stamped them into the ground with his feet. It was curious to see ashes and charred fragments on this stone: so perhaps it had looked a thousand years ago after a bloody sacrifice had been offered to a pagan god.

  He returned at once to the village, going quietly by the back of the church. It was reassuring to see the familiar gold of the linden trees, the familiar gray of the church tower and those stones that marked the last resting-place of the peaceful dead. It was reassuring to see the Rectory and Ann Trickett hanging out clothes under the orchard trees, and the beehives in the rows beneath the glistening green apples on the bough, and the dog barking in the sun.

  Why, perhaps this had all been a bother about nothing!

  But he remembered the sick boy…

  Calling Jonathan Mortin, he told him to take the gray horse, Merriman, to the Middleton Glen by twelve o’clock and to give it to the dissenter.

  “You and I infringe the law in this, Mortin,” he said, “but I suppose it will not grieve you. It was Mistress Elizabeth’s wish and her money, too, and where she has been charitable we must not be harsh.”

  Mortin replied that he was very willing to do this errand, for he thought the dissenter a brave man and one who did much good.

  “More good, perhaps, than I do,” smiled the Rector sadly. “He knows these people, he has been among them nearly twenty years and I but a few months.”

  Then he went upstairs to his laboratory and glanced up at the stars, painted on the cloudy skies on the ceiling and then addressed himself to the task of preparing the physic for the tailor’s apprentice.

  He had several books on the plague in his medical library, but he knew by heart some of the recipes. A decoction of rue leaves was considered a sovereign remedy, and there was ‘Lady Kent’s Powder’; the use of spices and pomanders was much admired. He had some of these in his drawer and he took them out and began to make up a packet. Then, pausing in the middle of his task, he went to the closet and took out a large bottle of vinegar and some cloths and washed and dried his hands. He had heard of people who had passed through an epidemic unscathed because they always kept themselves soaked in vinegar, even bandaging cloths wet with the acid round their heads.

  Sir George Savile had given him, some time ago, a tract issued by the College of Physicians that was full of directions and prescriptions of what to do in case of various illnesses. He recalled that one precaution was to burn fires in the streets, but there was a difference of opinion as to whether these should be wood or coal fires; he found the pamphlet on his shelf.

  Earnestly intent on his task, William Mompesson read through the tract until he came to that portion of it which dealt with the plague. There were many prescriptions and all of them old, being mostly those of that noted physician, Signor de Vigo, who had died a hundred and twenty years before.

  First, read the tract, in time of infection from this disease, it was best to have something to smell at, not sweet but sharp — a physic box, a pouncet box, and a pomander were all good. There were also plague waters that were considered most efficacious. Tobacco was good.

  And Mr. Mompesson remembered that Jack Corbyn had been chewing a plug of tobacco at St. Helen’s Wake last night…Mention was here, too, of Goddard’s drops.

  Mr. Mompesson remembered hearing his father speak of this physician, for he had attended General Cromwell in the Irish and Scottish campaigns and was afterwards Master of a College at Oxford. Sir George Savile had told his chaplain that the secret of this famous drop had been sold to Charles II for a large sum, more than five thousand pounds. But Sir George, laughing, had added that this was but a roguery, for there was nothing in the recipe but a volatile spirit of raw silk rectified with oil of cinnamon and that the whole thing was no better than ordinary spirits of hartshorn.

  ‘Well, I have none of these things,’ thought William Mompesson, ‘but I have oil of cinnamon and some spices and hartshorn and I will take these round to the poor lad.’

  He began to be interested in the matter for its own sake, for he had spent too much time when he had been in Rufford Park in making his own experiments and following those of the Empirics and the Paracelsists or Chemical Physicians, and during his brief visit to London he had gone to St. Thomas’s Hospital and attended a demonstration given by the great anatomist, Dr. Wharton.

  He also knew of the lectures and experiments that had been made by the Royal Society and their meetings at Gresham College. But now with all these scraps of wisdom he was but in a bewilderment and had to fall back on the simple remedies that were used in most households for all diseases.

  So he made up a case of his oils and drops and put in a pomander and left the house to go to the tailor’s cottage.

  Kate and Bessie were watching from a window and saw him go out and called at him, and he waved up at them cheerfully. They wondered where he had been and asked him why he had not come to breakfast. He said that a parishioner was not well and required his attendance, and they were content with that, for he spent quite a portion of his time visiting the sick, though so far he had undertaken this duty without much satisfaction to himself or others.

  When he went to the tailor’s house he found that man much composed; he believed that young Fulwood’s illness was but slight after all, for he was lying placidly and showed no signs of delirium. So Mr. Mompesson gave him the medicine, told him to use the pomander and to burn cinnamon in the room, and to wash his hands frequently with vinegar and to sprinkle it on the door sill. If the young man showed fever, it would be better to purge and bleed him.

  “And for that you must get the barber-surgeon, and mind that he, too, washes his hands in vinegar and makes himself a pomander.”

  “Still I lament the wedding dress,” confessed the tailor. “What will Mistress Bessie be married in now, sir?”

  This reminded Mr. Mompesson that he had not yet told the two young women of the misfortune that had overtaken their finery. They would be angry with him, though he had better cause to be angry with them for their carelessness in sending for goods from London.

  He turned away, thoughtful, and as he went through the churchyard he remembered the ridiculous incident of Sythe Torre and the cow in the church. How all these fantasies impinged both on sober, practical truth and on spiritual communion with God…

  It occurred to him that he should have advice and support at this moment. If the plague was really in Eyam there were certain steps to be taken — a pest-house must be erected on the green, so that those who sickened might be kept apart from the others. Perhaps it would be well for Bessie to be married sooner and to leave the place, it would be but a question of hastening the ceremony on a few days, and although poor Kate’s cooking and housewifery arts might be disturbed, what were those matters compared to safety from the plague?

  So he thought that the best place for him to go to would be to the old Manor Hall and there to speak to Mr. Corbyn, who would be Bessie’s father-in-law.

  When he reached this place he found that the old man was already abroad, having gone to Bakewell on a matter of business about his tithes from the mine. But Jack was there, sitting idly in the parlour with his hands in the pockets of his rose-pink plush coat and his feet stretched out before him, a clay pipe hanging out of the corner of his pale mouth, and his yellow lovelock falling forlornly over his sullen eyes.

  William Mompesson, who had been so pleased with the behaviour of the youth under the reproaches of Mr. Thomas Stanley last night, was disappointed to see him in this indolent guise. He should surely have already been in attendance on Bessie…

  But Jack got to his feet with a good enough grace and excu
sed himself for his idleness by saying that he felt sick, that he had dismal qualms in the stomach and an ache in his head.

  “It is your potations of last night, Jack,” said Mr. Mompesson, “the price all revellers must pay for their merriment. But, sir, I have something important to say to you that will shake you out of this lassitude.”

  The young man turned quickly, there was an eager look over his face.

  “Is it about Bessie?”

  “In a manner, yes. I want you to advance your wedding. I want you to be married to-morrow. You must take her away at once, to that house of your friend’s outside York city, where you were planning to go till the Dower House was ready.”

  “But why? That will ruin everything! What about the feast and entertainment? My mother and father and your wife…”

  “Yes,” interrupted the Rector, “I know all about these preparations, but something has happened. A box of clothes has come to George Vickers, the tailor. It is possible it is infected.”

  “With the plague?” exclaimed young Corbyn at once.

  “I do not know. There is no reason why we should fear it, and yet it might be. Young Fulwood, who works for him, is sick, and 1 took the clothes out and burnt them on the big stone on the wide moor.”

  “The plague in Eyam,” muttered Jack. He sat down flatly in the window seat and cast his glance on the floor; his dissolute face was livid.

  “You see, you must help me, by setting an example to the others. I have told no one else.”

  William Mompesson proceeded to detail his visit to Vickers, the illness of the apprentice and how he had taken the infected clothes up to the moor and burnt them.

  “Why do you come to me about it?” demanded Jack Corbyn heavily.

  “I came to see your father, really, John, but as he is away, why then, I must speak to you. I must have all those who are in authority in Eyam on my side. It may be that we shall have to face an outbreak of plague here.”