At the Door of the Church

Five months, she kept reminding herself, it'd been five months.

She let her hands roam over the silky seams of the dress she wore, for it was the only thing keeping her from tumbling off the edge of the seat of the carriage.  She waved at the crowd of onlookers, smiling, but she knew it didn’t reach her eyes.

Five months; she closed her eyes, that was long enough to know if something was right.  Yes, yes it was.  The day would only last so long, and the following days would be the happiest of her life.  This was just the usual jitters of a young bride she decided.

The sounds of thousands screaming were all she felt as she exited the carriage and joined the wedding party at the steps of the old church.  It was a lovely church, she thought, as she pulled her dress up and walked up the many steps to the large door that stood before her, the veil could have weighed ten tons, and the train was maybe the most beautiful in all the world, and she was soon to be the future Queen of England, but everything felt wrong.

On the other side of the door lay a new life.  A new chapter.  This was the beginning of something beautiful, young, even perfect.  But was it?  Walking in was also leaving her innocence, her childhood, herself, abandoning it all for something bigger than herself.  

The strong memory of the night before kept replaying like a favorite song on one’s CD player, in her head.  “I don’t love you.”

“I don’t love you.”

“I do not love you.” He’d said, tears brimming his eyes.

It was like a poison, the words she’d feared, sweeping from her ears to her heart to her soul, it filled with doubt so deep she was swimming in fear.  She wore the doubt like a cloak, carrying it with her on the very wedding steps, that became a hatred for no one or nothing but herself.

Each bridesmaid disappeared through the doors, leaving her alone with her father, who stood patting her arm, filled with undeniable excitement.  His daughter would marry the Prince, the Crown Prince, of England today, and he would be the one to work her down the aisle to him.   Like the hinges on the century-old doors, she was beginning to shut her own heart away, locking the key and tossing it into the abyss of hope that she knew she would need to make the marriage work.

The familiar tune, her tune that she had chosen began to drift outside to the feet of her and her father.  The doors parted for Diana Frances Spencer, and she took a deep breath, and clinging to her father’s arm, began to step down the aisle to her future.

“Momma I want to be like her when I grow up!”  A little pigtailed girl called in the crowd.  Atop her head was a small crown, as if she was a princess getting married too.

“The most beautiful bride in a century,” One journalist wrote in his notepad, watching the girl walk into the church.

One small boy imagined the prince on the other side of the doors, waiting for his bride, and pretended to use a stick as a sword, “Mother does he wear a sword?”

Inside the church, the queen herself watched her son, pity, and that motherly sadness filling her.  It was necessary, this marriage; to the crown, and Charles would have to learn that sacrifices had to be made to keep the crown from tumbling.

The doors flew open and a stream of bright sunlight blinded the church.  When all’s eyes had adjusted, they peered back to where a girl, no, a woman stood.  The father on her arm was nothing to her light, and she glowed as she drifted down the aisle.  Her beauty was unimaginable, and the train never seemed to end as she waltzed to the end, leaving her father and joining hands with her fiance.

He could not deny his bride’s beauty; nor her kindness.  She was a gentle girl, with a big heart, but as she gazed at him, her eyes filled with a mix of longing, sadness, and most of all, love, he found himself unable to look back.  

The vicar began the ceremony; and droned on and on, his voice rolling over every audience member, filling the humid air with an oppressive heat that Charles began to sweat with.  It was all, “love,” and “to have and to hold,” and he wished for all those things, but it wasn’t the woman he was marrying that he wished them with.  

When the dreaded question came, and she looked him dead in the eyes and didn’t lose eye contact, she said her part, stumbling a little, smiling with relief when she was finished.  When it was his turn, he couldn’t meet her eye, because when he gazed into them, it wasn’t her who looked back.

35 years.  It had been 35 years.

It was more than just some time apart.  It was a lifetime.  

Years and years of patient waiting; of being second, and that would all change today.  

Despite the story that had led up to this point, they would be married.  Love won.  Though guilty of past mistakes, they would ride in the guilt together, navigating the sea of pain England would experience upon the marriage of Charles to another woman.  She would be queen, but never the Queen of Hearts.

Camilla had waited 35 years in the back corners of the backstage of Charles's life, watching as he went through engagement and marriage; children and divorce, and he too, had waited.  They’d waited together, always promising they would never give the other up.

When Camila walked down the aisle, she knew, she wouldn’t turn and run.  She would gallop like a stallion on a track down the aisle to the man she’d waited for her entire life. 

And then she would say the words that had played under her eyelids every time she closed them, “I do.”