Madame Tea

A White Day for a Wise Wedding

Well, it finally happened. I got invited to the wedding of the century, even if it was completely unknown and unreported in the polite society pages. In fact the only magazines that carried a mention of the event were the Guadalajaren Gazette, a paper so small that circulation doubles whenever the local goat herd stampedes through town and eat at the local newsstand, as well as Assassins, Assets and Asses, a kind of Burke's full of twerps from the underworld that had to be brought out each month as the Machiavellian power struggles rose and toppled family heads faster than a Jenga convention. It also got a smaller mention in Serial killers of the 21st century. 

The invitation was paw delivered by a Romanian Flying Tea Bear, printed on White Darjeeling parchment, and in a tea-tinny voice announced proudly the marriage of Lady Mariannargh Diane Blow De Con Ellegro A Contarto Port Thekla Nan Polo Ad Astra Harriet Teya Parkin The Third, nee Madame Tea, aka The Fragrant Death, The Saucer Assassin, the Darjeeling Ninja, The Final Scarf, The Tea Lady, etc, etc, to Bob 'Milky' Sandepogo, aka The Gunpowder Plotter, Jake the Bake, The Milk Man, and The Afternoon Golfer, in The Church of the Lonely Towpath. The church is dedicated to the wisdom and inebriation of Saint Martius, Saint Wodan, and, by a musical of poor signwriting, Jamerson St, and contained a small shrine to St Arggustus, patron saint of those who die violently. It was certainly true that it was the last name most of Madame Tea's customers would invoke, shouting, "Oh! Arggg....."

The invitation, as family tradition demanded, was poisoned with a slow and lingering rosewood illness, which activates on contact with the skin and started with a severe allergic reaction to herbal teas. Only those guest who were actually wanted at the event would know where to hold the invitation, the rest would, therefore, be unfortunately indisposed during the ceremony, though they often recovered. Just for me though, Madame Tea had highlighted the areas of the invitation I shouldn't touch in invisible ink, and I had it laminated straight away, just to be safe. 

The church was quite small, and the family chapel even smaller, so a hole had been blown in the wall of the shrine to accommodate more people. This had left nothing but the altar intact, so it was decided to have an outdoor wedding, camped around the single standing wall on chairs borrowed from the local primary sane asylum. Every seat was needed too, as there was a large presence at the ceremony, with almost every client that the pair had killed for invited, and, in spite of all the rivalries between the various drug lords, mafiosi, and Women's Institutes (or possibly Instituti), they were all pretty well behaved. This was quite probably because they were in the presence of the most dangerous family in the world, a group of men and women who were so cunning that they might poison the coins in the collection plate before it was passed around, and this meant not only that no one was brave enough to steal the money but that the clinking of the plate actually indicated a net gain for the church. 

It was a simple ceremony: it had to be as Madame Tea's pet, Cuthbert Fladelstone, was known for lacking patience when his mistress was there. Cuthbert was a handbag llama, though with some obvious Pit Bull in her hereditary, and was known for spitting at you from her usual perch on the mantelpiece, before latching onto an ankle while you tried to clean the gunk out of your eyes. MT always claimed that the mucus was good for the skin, though this might only have been in the same way as an acid peel, and the little fluff ball was known in most circles as 'The Dilly', a joke only understood by movie-watching palaeontologists and therefore, appropriately, not actually funny to anyone.

On the two occasions I met 'The Dilly', she did attempt to launch her venoms upon me, but both times she was somewhat thwarted. The first was by a faulty air conditioning unit that seemed to have just one vent running with the force of a hurricane, hoovering a thin, neat line of shag off the carpet, leaving the surrounding weave intact, and at the time sucking up the projected mucus of Cuthbert as if it had hit a wall. This unusual intake, of course, buggered the AC unit even more, and it made a spirited attempt for freedom and independence, leaping from the ceiling and through the window before realising it was on the 7th floor and plunged to a dramatic death through the top of a cream egg tanker. The second time I was saved by a sympathising anachronistic racoon.