Page 101 of The Ladies Least Likely
CHAPTER TWENTY
B ea insisted they stay the night at the Green Man so she could cook them a farewell dinner, and that meant Amaranthe had a day to follow up on her last question.
She slipped away in late afternoon with her woolen cloak, her walking boots, and the duchess’s plainest traveling gown.
She told Joseph and the Littlejohns she simply wanted to explore, which resulted in Bea pressing a pocket map of Bristol upon her.
A quick consultation told her to continue along Old Market to Castle Street and past the old Norman keep.
At St. Nicholas she would find the Bridge to cross the River Avon, and from there she need only stay due south on Redcliffe Street to find the church she sought.
Bristol was second in size only to London, and like that city, humming with trade and the commerce of the sea.
Smoke from homes and the porcelain factories mingled with the scent of horses and ships and the sweet, yeasty smell of the sugar houses where cane and molasses shipped from the West Indies were baked into sugar loaves to satisfy the British sweet tooth.
She saw more sailors than anyone else, all shades of brown faces mingling around the quay, those born their shade and those who had acquired it through weathering work in the sun, while here and there stood out the paleness of someone who didn’t work at all.
As she neared the ancient stone bridge across the Avon, masts and ships crowded the harbor, as close as the medieval and Elizabethan houses shouldered side by side down the street.
Around her swirled many dialects and languages, including the distinct Bristol accent.
She heard traces of it in Mal’s speech sometimes, small but clear, and the linguist in her was fascinated.
Thanks to King Alfred, southwest England, including Bristol, had withstood centuries of Danish invaders until shortly before William the Conqueror arrived with his Norman armies, and so the English here had not changed in the same way as in the north and Midlands.
Of course, the Cornish claimed they had never been subject to any invaders, Roman, Saxon, or Norman.
It was a point of pride. They had lived on their tiny peninsula surrounded by the sea since before Lyonesse sank into the ocean, and they defended their own ways fiercely.
Perhaps that explained her stubborn streak.
Even if Mal wouldn’t want it known, Amaranthe needed to find out the truth for herself.
St. Mary Redcliffe had been damaged during past wars, and gaps showed in the arched stained-glass windows.
The tower had been shorn of its spire, but the elaborate Gothic pinnacles still sprouted along the roof.
Amaranthe could see why Marguerite, who had treasured a medieval Book of Hours so much that she hid her most precious possession within it, had loved this church.
The inside was silent save for other visitors like her roaming about, gaping at the impossibly high vaulted ceiling and the many sculpted monuments to Bristolians past, mayors and merchants and men who had made their fortune selling kidnapped Africans.
Amaranthe admired the wooden choir stalls, dating to medieval centuries, and the enormous rib of a whale given by John Cabot to commemorate his voyages.
She was studying the delicately painted panels of the triptych over the altar when a man in a priest’s collar stepped up beside her.
“One of the newest things here,” he remarked.
“Commissioned by Hogarth twenty years or so ago. We have a bell that’s a hundred and fifty years old and woodwork dating to the fourteenth century.
One of our fonts was made in the thirteenth century, but our building was begun a century before that.
Likely there was a church on this site when Christians first came to this island. ”
“I imagine, with so much history here, you keep very careful records,” Amaranthe said. “I’ve been following a lively discussion in the magazines about whether Thomas Rowley, a monk in Bristol during the fifteenth century, penned the poetry that has been attributed to him.”
“I am familiar with that discussion.” The vicar’s voice dripped with disdain.
“The medieval works supposedly discovered by young Thomas Chatteron. The family have been sextons here for an age. Young Thomas ran tame through our muniments room, pawing at this manuscript and that, before he left for London. I’m afraid one can only expect such a peculiar youth to come to a bad end.
” He sniffed. “And what is your impression of the dubious Brother Rowley, if you have one?”
Amaranthe smiled. “I found Rowley’s dialect to be like no dialect of Middle English that I know or have studied, but a strange and fanciful blend of many elements. Almost as though a bright young child had studied a Chaucerian manuscript and attempted to create a medieval dialect of his own.”
The vicar’s expression shifted to approval. “Very good, Mrs.—” He looked around for her male companion, no doubt to congratulate him on her cleverness.
“Miss Amaranthe Illingworth, antiquarian,” she said, and the words gave her a thrill to say them. “Indeed, I have come here in search of a record myself. But I imagine that a man of your importance would not have the time to indulge my curiosity on this matter.”
“On the contrary, I am always happy to show our muniments room to those who have a proper understanding of and appreciation for ancient things,” the vicar said, producing a key from his vestments. “Shall your, er, chaperone join us?” Once again he looked about in vain.
“I was obliged to come alone today, as my betrothed had business to attend to in London,” Amaranthe said. “He is preparing to be called to the bar and his advice was needed for a legal matter.”
“Oh, very good.” The mention that she was attached to a man of gentlemanly station changed the vicar’s demeanor toward her instantly.
Amaranthe saw this attitude daily in her work in London.
A man could be an antiquarian as a respectable hobby or even a trade; a woman was venturing outside her proper sphere.
She couldn’t find it in her to feel guilty about the lie as she followed the vicar across the vast, beautiful nave to the north porch.
Mal had wanted to marry her to advance his professional ambitions.
It was fair play if she used him for the same ends.
Perhaps she ought to marry him after all just to see what doors would open to her as a barrister’s wife. If he did not retract his offer in whole after the discussion she knew they must have.
She followed the vicar up a short stone stair. With a bit of fumbling, he opened a grilled iron door to a narrow room lined with chests.
Her heart spun a pirouette at the sight of parchments and scrolls lying about for anyone to look at.
Her love of old relics and manuscripts had begun with her own dear St. Cleer, four hundred years older than the upstart St. Mary Redcliffe.
But St. Cleer was a heap of granite rubble in comparison to the Gothic immensity of this church, and the miners and farmers who comprised the town’s population were not much for producing literature or indeed any valuable documents.
Amaranthe harbored a small pang that there hadn’t been time to take Mal to St. Cleer. It was a beautiful place of flowing rivers and ancient piled stones, perched on a rocky corner of the moors. He would have liked the holy well, her favorite girlhood refuge.
She pushed away thoughts of Mal. He wouldn’t appreciate her current understanding, but just as she couldn’t leave a book without reading to the end, she couldn’t leave Bristol without sorting for herself this last bit of Marguerite’s mystery.
“The document I seek is a marriage record,” she told the vicar. “From 1747.”
“A family concern?” He examined the label on a nearby chest, then lifted the lid and produced a heavy, leather-bound tome.
Her chest throbbed, and she wondered if he heard her rasping breath. “My betrothed’s family, actually.” The vicar wouldn’t fault her for snooping, would he? A woman ought to enter marriage with full awareness.
The register was not the neat columned business of smaller parishes but an immense folio with separate pages for each entry, showing names, dates, and witnesses.
Amaranthe flipped through the blur of names and happy events.
There was a chunk of September 1752 missing when the calendar had been adjusted to bring Britain in line with the rest of the Western world.
There were two pages for May 1747, but neither of them were for a Marguerite Grey and Hugh Delaval.
Well, Beatrice had looked and found nothing. What had she expected?
Amaranthe ran a finger down the fold, thinking for a moment of these couples that had entered the solemn institution of marriage, possibly with such high hopes, perhaps the same kind of passion she found herself harboring for Mal.
She’d never be sorry, but now that she’d discovered such wild, heady desire, she wondered if she could ever be the plain, sensible Amaranthe Illingworth again.
The binding felt uneven. She ran her finger along it again.
“A page has been removed here,” Amaranthe said. “Cut out, or ripped.”
“You must be mistaken.”
“I am familiar with how books are bound. The parchment page is folded into quires and the quires are sewn together. This is not folded but torn. The second half of the folio is missing.”
“That is curious.” The vicar had the same bland look she’d adopted earlier when he was condescending to her.