The Bride of Texas Read Free Page A

Prophet, chapter sixteen, verse thirteen,” and there was a gleam in his eyes as he recited in a singsong voice,
“Thou wast exceeding beautiful, and thou didst prosper into a kingdom.…
”
    Shake gave a quiet chuckle.
    “What is it?” whispered the sergeant, but Shake placed a finger on his lips and listened to the chaplain, who was speaking the words as if he had a mouth full of butter. The sergeant decided he’d better start paying attention too. He recalled the preacher’s first sermon for the military, before Kennesaw Mountain — the one that had made him famous, practically a legend. Mulroney had joined the army in a fit of patriotism, forsaking the safety of his parish, where his duties had included caring for the spiritual welfare of the wards of Mrs. Terrence-Willoughby’s Academy for Young Ladies, a responsibility that had certainly not prepared him for life in the army. On the eve of the bloody massacre he chose the loss of virginity as the subject for his maiden sermon. With a sheaf of yellowing paper trembling in his fingers, he stumbled over every other word, even though he was reading from his notes. As a matter of fact, since everyone’s sphincter muscles were clenched in dread of the upcoming battle, it wasn’t such a bad topic. There was none of the usual coughing and throat-clearing, and Lieutenant Matlock even quit picking his teeth with a splinter of wood, as was his custom when listening to the word of God. Even the colonel listened with interest, at least as long as the preacher stuck to virginity, its loss, and the social and physical consequences thereof. But then Mulroney switched to the consequences that lay in the hereafter, and unfortunately he departed from his yellowed notes. Perhaps it had finally dawned on him that when he’d written this sermon so many years ago, he hadn’t done so with an audience of soldiers in mind. Now he addressed his warning to men who, in his words, had sunk so low as to rob some poor maiden of her maidenhead or, worse, had actually paid money to commit a mortal sin. The association between virginity and sin was pretty flimsy, but the clergyman made up for it with a colourful description of thetorments awaiting the sinner in hell. That was when the colonel began coughing meaningfully, louder and louder, until the reverend noticed and returned to his notes, concluding with a fervent plea to virgins to preserve their treasure till marriage. Then a cannonade sounded from beyond the woods. Sergeant Kapsa thought the colonel had been set coughing by the mention of sin for sale — he was a notorious customer of the camp followers, regardless of their colour — but he was wrong; the colonel’s displeasure was moral and praiseworthy. He thanked the chaplain — very curtly — and in his most sonorous voice announced that of course those boys who went straight from the impending battle to the other world would, without exception — deflowered virgins notwithstanding — go straight to heaven. The soldiers’ sphincter muscles tightened again, and all thought of the succulent pleasures of peacetime vanished.
    The chaplain had improved since Kennesaw Mountain. Not that he’d abandoned his favourite themes, but there were no more notes. Nowadays he spoke of virginity extempore, and sounded to the sergeant like someone reading from one of those blue novels Corporal Gambetta rented out for three cents a day, though the chaplain cleverly shrouded the erotic details in biblical allegory. The sergeant watched the ears of the two men flanking the bride — the groom, Baxter Warren, and the best man, Cyril Toupelik — grow redder and redder.
“How beautiful are thy feet, the joints of thy thighs are like jewels, the work of the hands of a cunning workman”
— even the sergeant could recognize Mulroney’s departure from Ezekiel —
“thy two breasts are like two young roes that are twins
 —” sighed the preacher, gazing at the bride with lascivious eyes. None