The Vows of Lord Pigglesworth

Nigel Wickham had thought of everything. He had thought of the hydrangeas. He had thought of the broth. He had thought of the Bath Conservatoire quartet he had personally recommissioned. He had thought of the four sachets of artisan liver paste stitched into the lining of his tuxedo, which were, he had explained to Sarah the previous evening, for the discreet motivational steering of dogs.

He had not considered about what happens to a sachet of liver paste when an anxious Englishman sits on it.

On the quartet’s downbeat, one burst.

The day, he understood, was finished.

He kept a binder for every contingency. EVERY CONTINGENCY, the spine said, in a Helvetica that appeared commanding at the printer’s. The binder had nothing on liver.

“Nigel.” Sarah, crisp, from the production tent. “We are showing an anomaly on your person.”

“I am aware.”

“Shall I brief the string quartet.”

“Not yet.”

Out in the meadow, sixty-three fascinators waited on sixty-three white chairs. Lord Pigglesworth sat at the altar looking, as Pugs do, mildly betrayed by the century. At the top of the aisle, Duchess Daisy rode a motorised carriage that had cost rather more than Nigel’s car. The chicken broth was holding at exactly the temperature he had told it to hold at. He had checked with a thermometer. Twice. A man who takes the broth seriously takes everything seriously.

He had fled human weddings after the bride in Bath had mouthed I can’t across her own reception, under an arch Nigel had spent eleven hours wiring, nine of them up a ladder. Dogs, he had reasoned, did not change their minds. Dogs were about to show him that they did not need to.

He raised his baton.

Six Golden Retrievers, credentialed groomsmen, rose from their cushions at the mouth of the aisle. They regarded the altar. They regarded Nigel. They regarded the aisle. They regarded Nigel.

They charged.

“Retrievers two through six are off-script,” said Sarah.

“I had noticed.”

“They appear to have reclassified you as luncheon.”

“Thank you, Sarah.”

“You are very welcome, Nigel.”

From the front row it looked like a mugging by six exceptionally friendly dogs. Nigel, who had billed this phase as The Blessing of the Brethren, staggered backward into a trellis and discharged a handful of liver-scented decoy biscuits into the champagne fountain at the altar’s base. Six dogs followed the biscuits. Six dogs entered the fountain. Mrs Ainsley of Tetbury, who had come chiefly for the hat, began to applaud, uncertain but committed.

“A marvellous display of animal exuberance!” cried the Mayor of Bath. He had been opening garden parties professionally since the late nineties and was not going to let an unscheduled wildlife event stop him. He had also not been invited to the microphone.

Nigel bowed to the Mayor. The bow dislodged a second sachet.

“Sarah.” His utterance had gone very calm, the calm of a pilot who has just noticed the left engine is on fire and the right engine is a chicken. “Release the Duchess. Release the Duchess.”

“Duchess away.”

The carriage began its majestic roll. Lord Pigglesworth’s nostrils flared. A crow rose from the oaks at the treeline. This was Houdini, Nigel’s ring bearer of six months’ conditioning. He opened a slow, careful arc above the guests.

In the next field, a twelve-year-old called Kieran powered up his birthday drone.

Frequencies do what frequencies do.

“Sarah, we have a frequency bleed.”

“I can see it from here, Nigel. The drone is aggressively orange.”

“Cut the carriage.”

“I have tried. The carriage is not taking my calls.”

“Why is it doing doughnuts.”

“Because that is what drifting carriages do, Nigel.”

“Can we slow it.”

“Not with any instrument I was given.”

The carriage hit twenty, thirty, a speed well past the ambition of its engineers. Duchess Daisy, bred for cushions and laps and the tender civilised world, pinned her ears back as her vehicle drifted sideways through a bed of imported Dutch tulips. The Mayor of Bath, holding a crystal flute of rosé, found the flute suddenly full of dirt.

“Extraordinary,” said the Mayor, to no one.

Mrs Ainsley of Tetbury took a photograph.

Nigel ran.

This was, in retrospect, a poor idea. Oxfords on wet grass, chasing a centrifugal Pomeranian, is how men die in the Cotswolds. He knew this. He ran anyway.

The crow dived.

The beak hit his shoulder. His Oxford came down in a puddle of spilled Canine Cristal, which at that temperature had the coefficient of friction of a restrained threat. Briefly, and without consent, Nigel flew.

He landed in the champagne fountain. Again. This time the dogs had left.

Five gallons of tepid broth took him in without comment. The fountain toppled on top of him. Then the glitter cannon, cued for the First Kiss, decided now was as good a moment as any. Daisy, ejected from the carriage at height and velocity, came down in a tidy parabola and settled, rigid with accusation, on top of Nigel’s head.

He lay in the grass, wearing the bride.

“Nigel. Are you upright.”

He opened his mouth to answer.

Above him, Houdini unclenched his feet.

Two gold-plated collars turned in the sun, picked up the light gracefully, and fell. Nigel’s open mouth was the nearest hole.

Down they went.

The headset went quiet. It stayed quiet for a bit.

“Sarah.”

“I am here.”

“The rings have —”

“Yes.”

“They are in my —”

“Yes, Nigel.”

“This is not in the binder.”

“I believe the binder has been retired, Nigel.”

By now the judges had gone. Proper gone. The lead judge from Elite Canine Magazine wept into her lanyard and kept announcing, to her own shoes, “He has consumed the bond.” The Mayor of Bath wore a film of broth. He clapped above his head, the way one claps at fireworks. “Marvellous! Marvellous! I did not know that was permitted!”

Daisy, still on Nigel’s head, licked his ear. Lord Pigglesworth, the groom, forgotten, waddled across the lawn and licked the other ear, so that the Pomeranian and the Pug held a small cordial summit across Nigel’s face while Mrs Ainsley of Tetbury took a second photograph and began, quietly, to weep with joy. Her hat, for reasons best known to itself, had acquired a tulip.

Nigel closed his eyes.

“Sarah.”

“Yes.”

“We have won.”

“Have we.”

“I can feel it.”

“That will be the rings, Nigel.”

* * *

He took first prize. They gave him a silver bone on a plinth, with a Latin motto he could not translate and suspected, in private, was fictitious. The rings arrived a week later by a route he declined to describe in polite company.

A fortnight on, Nigel sat at his kitchen table in Bath attempting to itemise the expenses. There was a line for Corvid — Ring Bearer (trained), against which he had, technically, no invoice. No trainer on file. No cage rental. No record of a crow at all, when he checked, which he did several times, with the slow dread of a man auditing himself.

He went to the back window.

On the fence sat a crow. It was holding, between its feet, what could only charitably be described as not somebody else’s wedding ring. It looked at Nigel with the settled professionalism of a man on his lunch.

Nigel drew the curtain.

The phone rang. That was indeed Sarah.

“Nigel.”

“Sarah.”

“The Mayor of Bath’s office rang. His daughter is engaged.”

“Oh God.”

“He would like, verbatim, exactly what happened at the dog wedding.”

“Exactly.”

“Yes, exactly. His brief is in front of me and he has gone to the trouble of numbering it. The first paragraph asks for what happened at the canine event, in full. The second mentions, without elaboration, that his daughter owns seven parrots. The third is the word please. With four exclamation characters.”

Nigel looked at the curtain. Behind the curtain, on the fence, the crow was almost certainly still there.

“Sarah.”

“Yes.”

“What is our day rate for a corvid.”

“I had anticipated the question. I have him down at two hundred per diem, plus walnuts.”

“Walnuts.”

“He is union, Nigel.”

“He is not.”

“He behaves as if he is.”

From the fence came a single, satisfied caw.

Nigel drew a long breath. He drew back the curtain. He raised a hand.

The crow, generously, raised one back.