7

16th Side: The Bedding Ceremony

Mistress Crosar put her mouth so close to Joan’s ear that it tickled, and shouted, “Undo thy garters!”

Joan froze. They were at the back of the dancing hall, near the benches. People were everywhere. How could she pull up her skirts and undo her garters? Only vulgar, low-born girls, like the kitchen maids, pulled up their skirts without caring who saw. Besides, everyone would laugh at how skinny and bony her legs were.

“Oh, come here, lass!” her aunt said, and turned her around, tutting at how slow and clumsy Joan was in moving. Other women gathered around her. One of them was the Sterkarm woman, Isobel Allyot that was, whom she must now call mother. She could never do it. She’d choke. The women spread their skirts, blocking the view of other people, while her aunt pulled up Joan’s magnificent scarlet dress of Elf-Cloth with a flurrying and rustling, and reached underneath to undo the garter strings. It was necessary to undo them because, very soon, the newlywed couple would be put to bed, and the bride’s men would demand their right to take off her garters. It was better to have the garters already undone, and the strings dangling down where they could be easily reached.

Mistress Crosar slapped at Joan’s leg, to turn her farther around, so she could reach the other garter. “There!” she said, throwing down the skirts and straightening.

“She no wanted them undone, that be what,” said Isobel Sterkarm. “She wanted men to reach right up her skirt.” There was loud laughter from the Sterkarm women, either because they were really amused or because they curried favor with their mistress. The Grannam women, cocking an eye toward their own mistress, laughed less, and Mistress Crosar herself merely smiled. It wasn’t her style of humor, but what could you expect from the Sterkarms? And such remarks were customary at a wedding—they were supposed to be lucky.

Joan told herself that if she could endure this, and the night to come, if she could only set her teeth and endure it all, it would pass, like everything else. Her new life as a married woman might not be a happy one, but habit would inure her to it, and in time it would be relatively calm. Even the dray horse became accustomed to the everyday rubbing of its harness, to its sores and aches. Only endure: All things pass.

Someone had told tales about the garters being untied, because now the bride’s men came around Joan in an ebullient, noisy mob. She had known they would come, but still, their arrival was a shock. Men surrounded her: all beards and red, greasy faces, shining eyes and grinning teeth. They were drunk; shouting and laughing and shoving. She knew many of them—some by name, some by sight only. A few were uncles and cousins; many were neighbors. Not all were Grannams by name—if families lived in Grannam country and allied themselves to the Grannams, then they often called themselves Grannam.

It was only a game—and yet when they caught at her arms with hard, gripping hands and pulled her this way and that, her body felt that it was being attacked, and her heart pounded so hard, she could hardly breathe. I am such a coward, she thought, but she hadn’t expected them to come at her so quickly, to look so fierce, to bray and laugh with such harsh, loud voices; nor had she thought they would jerk her and shove her about, with so little care for her, as if she was a puppet, of no worth. Hands scrabbled at her skirts, touching and scratching her legs.

Sick and giddy, she struggled to pull down her skirts and fend them off. She’d forgotten that this was part of the ceremony—she could only think that she had to stop them pulling up her skirts and seeing her legs. They laughed all the more, and two of them held her arms. It was terrifying.

Two of the men straightened, yelling with triumph and flourishing her garters in the air. From the rest of the hall came a cheer, so loud that to Joan it seemed like a blow. She remembered the ceremony then, and forced a smile to her face, though tears spilled over her lashes. She was ashamed of her cowardice. She had let the Grannams down. They all saw my legs too, she thought. They’ll laugh to one another about how bony they are, and tell everyone … If she hadn’t been on show, she would have wept. Because she was on show, her fierce smile stretched as wide and tight as a skull’s.

The men were crowded away from her by women: all her bridesmaids, all the important women of both families, married and unmarried, all laughing and crowing and reaching out to grab at her and pull her along. They were going to take her to the wedding chamber. Trying hard to seem brave, Joan forced a laugh and went with them, but at heart she felt hopeless. She did not want to go to the wedding chamber at all, yet it was the only place she could go.

The women dragged her into the middle of the dance hall and there, clumsily, they hoisted her in their arms and carried her, chanting and yelling, out of the light and heat of the hall and into the chill evening dusk.

Out in the air, the shrill of the fiddle and the laughter and shouting of the women seemed suddenly thin and weak. Bumped and jostled and breathless in their arms, Joan was carried along in a spangle of darkness and lantern light and into the Sterkarm dormitory. There it was light again, and she was carried the length of the hall, between the beds and bedding and decorations, and through the door at the back of the hall into the wedding suite.

In the white, pink, and gold anteroom, the air was stiflingly scented: expensive Elvish candles were burning, filling the air with perfumed smoke and a gauzy yellow light. Among the pretty couches and garlands, the panting women set Joan on her feet and then dragged her excitedly toward the curtain at the back of the hall. Someone snatched the curtain back, revealing the big bed.

Joan was thrown onto the bed, among the soft, heart-shaped pillows and rose petals. A scent of lavender and spices rose up—not a hint of straw from the mattress. And she bounced, the Elvish bed was so soft and springy.

“Th’art ever so lucky,” someone said. “He be so handsome!”

“He be,” Isobel Sterkarm agreed complacently. “He be handsome, my Per.”

“A fine-looking young man,” Mistress Crosar allowed politely. “But do you no think our Joan a beautiful lass, Mistress Sterkarm?”

“Oh, that she is, that she is,” Isobel said. “No one could say she was not.” Andrea, who had pressed in among the crowd of women, to see and hear as much of this ceremony as she could, tried not to smile. Isobel’s tone lacked conviction. She guessed that Isobel was thinking: It’ll be a long time before that skinny may gives me a grandson. Once she had the girl at the Bedesdale tower, Isobel would probably fatten her like a pig for Hogmanay.

A girl plumped herself beside Joan and began undoing the laces that held on her sleeve. Andrea, finding herself pushed close to the bed, knelt on it at Joan’s other side and unlaced the other sleeve. Another young woman climbed onto the bed behind Joan, to unpin the wreath of flowers and ribbons from her hair. Leaning over Joan’s shoulder, this woman said, “They call him May—he be pretty as a may!”

Isobel laughed and said, “He be no may! Not my Per!”

“Let’s hope not!” a Grannam girl said daringly, and there was a tiny pause, the tiniest of gasps, as everyone feared that Isobel would take offense—but Isobel only laughed. Everyone else burst into loud, relieved laughter, and they all beamed around at one another, exhilarated to find themselves all getting on so well, Grannams and Sterkarms together.

Joan, looking around, found that the woman close beside her, pulling the lace from her sleeve, was the Elf-May, the beautiful one her new husband had been making eyes at. As Andrea pulled the lace free, Joan said, “Keep that! Tie it around your arm, and you’ll marry in a twelve-month.”

Andrea looked up and met the girl’s eyes. She thought again how very beautiful she was, but her cold glare was pure Grannam. “Thanks shall you have,” she said, and rolling up the ribbon, moved away.

Mistress Sterkarm herself bent to unfasten Joan’s bodice. It was a relief to have it loosened, so that the board didn’t press so hard against her breasts, but then she remembered why it was being removed, and felt sick. Behind her, she heard someone whisper what she herself was thinking: “He be a Sterkarm.”

Mistress Sterkarm must have heard, but she went on calmly pulling at the bodice laces and didn’t show it by as much as a flicker of an eyelid.

“So?” said a whisper behind Joan. “He be a good-looking Sterkarm!”

“Careful!” Mistress Sterkarm said to the girls who were pulling off Joan’s sleeves—perhaps she spoke more sharply because of what she’d overheard. “No pull off her gloves.” The gloves had to be left on, by custom, for the bride’s husband to remove. So when the sleeves were fully pulled off, the women anxiously tugged up the gloves again.

Ribbons and ribbon knots removed from Joan were being eagerly tied around sleeves and waists—they were pretty additions to a wardrobe and would be worn for weeks, both to show that their wearers were at the wedding and as good-luck charms to bring on another wedding. But every pin that pinned on a knot, or secured the skirt more firmly to the bodice, was carefully stuck into a pincushion wielded by Mistress Crosar. It was bad luck to keep a pin, and would ensure that the girl who kept it was not married for another long year.

Joan’s bodice was pulled off, and her skirt tugged down, and she was left in her shift and stockings of fine wool. With much shrieking and laughter, the girls pulled down the bedclothes, despite kneeling on them, and tumbled Joan into the bed. Then there was a fight, with pushing and shoving, to see which of the girls would pull off her stockings. Joan cowered on the bed as they fell on top of her and, sweating, red-faced, heaved one another up again. Finding herself unencumbered for a moment, Joan hastily sat up, pulled off her own stockings, and tossed them to the end of the bed. With screams, the excited, drunken girls fell on them, as men playing football fell on one another in a heap while trying to gain possession of the ball. Drawing her legs back out of harm’s way, Joan watched as the struggle rolled onto the floor. She had seen such fights before, at weddings she had attended as a guest, but while pretending to take part, she had always kept well back from the fight. She had never had any wish to win a bride’s stocking.

The bundle of fighting girls broke apart at last, and two stood, their hair all awry, their faces scarlet, waving the stockings, too breathless to do more than pant. The other guests cheered for them though, and applauded. “Canny lasses!” Isobel shouted, holding her hands high as she clapped. “Canny lasses!”

“Fetch groom!” someone shouted, and many voices took up the call. A little knot of girls separated themselves from the group and ran off to summon the men.

Mistress Crosar, guarding a glass of wine from pushes and shoves, moved her way through bouncing, excited girls to the bed. Seating herself on the bed’s edge beside her niece, she handed her the glass. “Drink that, and never mind. Tha’ll live to see morn!”

Isobel Sterkarm sat down on the bed’s other side. “Thine auntie be right. It be nowt but what every lass gans through.”

The two women looked at each other across the bed. Mistress Crosar didn’t care for being called “auntie” by Isobel Sterkarm, and she cared less for the woman using the familiar “thine,” even though she reluctantly admitted that, as an in-law, she had that right. But for a moment she approved of the woman’s good sense.

Joan took the wine and drank a big gulp, though her heart pounded and her breathing was tight. Still, her aunt and new mother were right. This had happened to Mistress Crosar herself, and to Isobel Sterkarm, and to their mothers, and grandmothers, and so on, back and back—to Grandmother Eve. They had all been brave, all the Grannam women, because they were Grannams. She had to be brave too.

Once Joan had been carried from the hall, there were many empty spaces on the Grannam side, and the Grannams fell quiet, watching and drinking as the Sterkarms grew noisier. Per’s cousins, Little Toorkild, Ingram, and Wat, left their table and came to join him at the high table, together with many friends. Windsor, seated beside Toorkild, felt overwhelmed by the crush and the sharp, acrid smell of sweat, but he leaned back in his chair and smiled at everyone, pretending to feel at ease. His bodyguards, he told himself, weren’t far away.

“If she be too strong for thee, Per, give us a shout!”

“Aye, we’ll be listening—we’ll run in and gi’ thee a hand. Or something!”

Sweet Milk held up his glass and shouted, “Here be to Per’s first son! Thy first grandson, Toorkild!”

Toorkild stood, almost falling back into his chair with his eagerness to stand, and, raising his glass, yelled, “My first grandson!”

Everyone roared and drank to that, even the Grannams. Per laughed, almost giddy with drink and good fortune. First the Grannam girl—wife, he had to remember she was his wife and a Sterkarm now—as if a Grannam could ever be a Sterkarm. But first his wife, and then the Elf-May. A full and happy day.

A knot of wild and excited girls came running in from the dark, with fluttering ribbons pinned to their breasts and their hair standing on end and flying everywhere. “Bride be in bed! She waits! Bring groom!”

Per jumped onto his chair and, from there, to the tabletop. He waved his arms in the air, gave a cockerel crow, and dived, full-length, into the arms waiting to catch him. A tangle of shouting, struggling men moved down the hall, carrying Per among them. The girls danced around them, cheering them on. The older Sterkarm men, Toorkild, and his brother, Gobby Per, followed behind, and Windsor walked with them. He kept a smile on his face and tried to think of it as boisterous high spirits—but the combination of armed Sterkarms and high spirits made him nervous.

The procession grew as Grannams rose from tables and joined them—even they were laughing and cheering. Per appeared above the knot of men, riding on their shoulders. They carried him out into the blue darkness of the evening, which smelled of damp earth and peat fires. The two big hounds, Cuddy and Swart, leaped up from where they’d been dozing and capered about the procession, jumping up and trying to reach Per. The men bawled about cuckoos’ nests and the prickly bush all the way to the Sterkarms’ dormitory, and even as they carried Per through the hall to the wedding suite.

Women peeped from behind the brocade curtain that hid the bed, giggled, and ducked out of sight again. The men set Per down in the midst of them and quickly undressed him, throwing aside his Elvish cap, pulling at the buttons of his Elvish shirt until it came undone. Some supported him while others yanked off his long boots, and then there was a fight—even more boisterous and noisy than the women’s fight—for his woolen stockings. The hounds became so excited, frenziedly running about and howling as they tried to defend Per, that Sweet Milk and another man had to drag them outside by force and tether them to stakes. Inside the hall, by the time two men were victorious in claiming Per’s stockings, there was a bruised eye and a bloodied nose among the company.

The undressing was completed by pulling down the strange fastening of Per’s Elvish breeches and pulling them off, leaving him in his Elvish shirt.

“They be unco short, these Elvish sarks,” Toorkild said. “Th’art only meant to show one lass what tha’rt made of!”

Per covered himself with cupped hands. His cousins swept back the curtain, and to squeals and cheers, Per was ushered to the bed, while the men chanted rhythmically in a way that reminded Windsor of 21st-century football supporters. Isobel started to cry, hugged her son, kissed him, and herself turned back the bedcovers for him to get in beside Joan.

Andrea, watching, saw Per look at Joan with a big smile, but Joan was doing her usual thing of looking down. She stared at the cover of the bed and refused to look at anyone.

The men gave deafening hunting whoops. Fiddlers and pipers played. And people screamed above the din, “Stockings! Stockings!” Andrea put her fingers in her ears. She saw Windsor standing among the men, looking pained.

The winners of the stockings, two men and two girls, now fought their way to the end of the bed, where one of each couple sat, their backs to the newlyweds. The girl looked over her shoulder, and everyone immediately yelled, “No looking! No looking!”

The girl threw her stocking, and it landed in the middle of the bed. Everyone groaned. Isobel snatched up the stocking and returned it to the girl. “Try again. Three goes!”

As the man threw his stocking, Per leaned forward, as if trying to catch it on his head—but the stocking fell onto the floor. The men booed, the women cheered. Andrea had no idea what was going on but was thrilled to be an observer.

The girl with the stocking tried another throw, tossing it harder this time. Joan, in the midst of all this noise, sat perfectly still, looking at the covers, as if she was alone. The stocking fell between her and Per, and Per threw it back to the girl so she could take her final turn.

This time the stocking landed on Joan’s head—and the cheer that went up, together with the clapping, stamping, and whistling, was so loud that Andrea had no doubt that this was the point of the game. Joan plucked the stocking from her head and threw it aside, onto the floor.

Both of the men managed to throw their stockings onto Per’s head—but then, he helped them considerably by moving to catch it. The second girl failed to toss her stocking onto Joan’s head even after being given a fourth try, and everyone groaned with her in sympathy.

Then the game was over, and the uproarious noise subsided into chatter and laughter. Andrea sidled through the crowd until she stood beside Isobel Sterkarm. “Be so kind, Mistress Sterkarm, will you tell me—why do they throw stockings on their heads?”

Isobel turned toward her, her pretty face flushed and beaming. Her pale-blue eyes were exactly like Per’s, and despite her happiness, she knuckled a tear from one. She dived at Andrea and enveloped her in a tight, warm hug, kissing her on the cheek. “Bless you, Mistress Elf—if you get a stocking on their heads, you’ll soon be married yourself!”

A maid came through the curtain, carrying a large wooden bowl with handles on either side. At the sight of the bowl, the crowd gave another cheer. The maid gave it to Mistress Crosar, who took it solemnly and carried it to the bed. As she passed where Andrea stood beside Isobel, there was a whiff from the bowl’s contents: something warm, milky, and spicy. There was a smell of alcohol, certainly, and cinnamon, and—nutmeg? Andrea wouldn’t have minded a glass of it herself.

Mistress Crosar handed the bowl to Joan, who drank from it. Everyone watching clapped and shouted encouragement, and Andrea was quick to clap too.

Joan handed the bowl to Per, though without looking at him. Per took a big gulp, and there was enthusiastic applause, especially from the Sterkarms.

“That be it! Keep up thy strength!”

The crowd around the bed was thinning, Andrea noticed. People obviously knew that this was the end of the day’s ceremony, and they were drifting away.

Per took another big gulp of the posset. The sooner it was all drunk, the sooner he and his wife would be left alone. He passed the drinking cup back to Joan, who took a tiny sip, then held the cup a long time before taking another tiny sip. She didn’t want the posset to be finished at all.

“Come along now, come along,” Mistress Crosar said. “Hurry and drink it all up.”

Joan took the biggest gulp she could and handed the cup to her husband. There was no point in trying to put it off. She was a Grannam. She had to be brave.

Per finished the last of the posset and handed the cup to his new aunt-by-law. Only Mistress Crosar, Isobel Sterkarm, Andrea, and one or two other women were left by the bedside now. Isobel kissed Per on the forehead and both cheeks; and Mistress Crosar kissed Joan on the head, and they all withdrew.

Andrea, glancing back over her shoulder as she went through the curtain, saw Per wink at her.