Page 45 of The Phoenix Bride
“There’s a pageant coming by.” She gestures to the crowd. “They’re all hoping to catch some coins.”
“A pageant?”
“Yes. My Lady Carlisle was married this afternoon. They should be here soon.”
A pageant to celebrate a marriage sounds extraordinarilyextravagant, but I suppose such things are common in London. With little better to do, I stand with Katherine by her stall, waiting alongside everyone else.
She gives me a curious look. “Might I ask, mistress, why you are always here without company?”
“Two times is not always,” I huff. “I should have company soon.”
“Oh? A gentleman, perhaps?”
I flush, seeing the corners of her mouth twitch in amusement. “Not that sort of company. Or—well, he is a gentleman, but…”
Then I hear a distant drumbeat, and I trail off. For a moment, I believe I have imagined the noise—Katherine is still looking at me quizzically—but soon the beat sounds again, and the crowd begins to whoop and separate, crowding to the edges of the cobbles to clear a space.
The beat is soon punctuated by a trumpet call, and then another. I gasp, for sheer shock at the sudden cacophony—with it comes the clash of a cymbal, and the round begins again. Once my surprise fades, I find myself tapping my fingers on my skirts to match the rhythm.
“Here they come,” Katherine says in hushed excitement. A glowing light has emerged at the end of the street, slowly approaching us: lantern bearers in scarlet livery, their burdens swinging trails of fire through the air like shooting stars. Behind them come the drummers and the trumpeters. Gold ribbons protrude from the open mouths of the instruments, dancing in the expulsions of air. The drummers shout between each beat—“the Lord and Lady Carlisle are married!”—and the crowd watching roars in answer: “A marriage! A marriage!”
“Are there more musicians?” I ask Katherine once the shouting ends, and she laughs in response. Because then, quite suddenly, all the rest come, in a great horde that turns the corner ofthe street and swallows it whole: lutenists on donkeys wearing gold tassels around their ears; children in togas and animal masks shaking tambourines; poets declaiming verse from gilded wagons pulled by teams of strongmen wearing velvet capes; a wisp of a girl in a flower coronet, sitting on the shoulders of another woman, both singing a madrigal; dancers in silks, young and old, male and female; and dozens upon dozens of drunken revelers, who—having been subsumed within the mass of the pageant like wine poured into a barrel—pull others near them into the fray, so that the procession grows larger and larger with each step it takes, louder and louder, more and more joyful.
The noise is too great for Katherine to speak, so instead she simply jabs my arm and points at something. The target of her attention is clear: the bride and groom themselves, at the center of the crowd. They are young, likely younger than I, flushed with excitement and laughing with delight. They ride white horses with silver saddles and reins adorned with tiny bells; the bride’s hair is down, falling in a russet veil to her midback, with white blooms and sparkling gems threaded into each lock. Her dress is a palest white, near translucent, and she wears a crown that frames her head in glowing spears of gold. Her husband beside her wears white, also, and a similar crown of silver. With one hand, he clutches her palm, and with the other, he throws coins to the crowd—but he never looks away from his wife. He is the moon to her sun.
I don’t bother to chase the coins, but Katherine does. I soon lose sight of her as she plunges into the melee. I don’t care. The pageant, its noise and color and joy, has made me a part of it already—as much a part of it as the trumpeters or the poets or the bride and groom. And when a group of dancing girls in emerald dresses spins by, offering hands to me so I can join them, I follow them gladly. We all clap and laugh as we twirl around thecoins glittering on the cobbles beneath us, only barely in time with the music. Then one of the women gathers me in her arms and unfurls me from them like a spinning top, which makes me so dizzy that I must stumble out of the pageant and back to the edges of the street. I lean against a brick wall, gasping, exhilarated, as the remainders of the procession pass me by.
The last of the noise fades, but my ears are still ringing. I find that I am laughing, my arms around my stomach, tears stinging my eyes—why I am laughing, why I am crying, I couldn’t say. I feel as if I have been half dead until this moment, half buried, now exhumed. I am glorious, terrified, undone, and remade. I am everything. I am all of it. I am London, and I am home.
It takes some effort to recover fully from the ordeal of the pageant, and I bow over by the wall for several minutes. Eventually, I hear someone saying something behind me; I am too overwhelmed to decipher it. Then a hand lays very lightly on my back, and I flinch, turning around. It is David. He is in his work clothes: a dark jacket, his hair tied back, beard newly trimmed. Perhaps he came from an appointment. In the warm light of the lanterns, he seems to glow and flicker like a candle flame.
“Hello,” I say, smiling. “You’re here.” Then I stumble a little. He seizes my forearms to prevent me from falling over.
“Are you all right?” he asks.
“Yes,” I say. “More than all right. But I am a little dizzy. They were spinning me.”
He chuckles. “I saw. Are you able to stand on your own?”
I lean a little further into his grip. “Not yet,” I lie. “I feel as if I have been in a windstorm.”
“It was an impressive pageant. They clearly spared no expense.”
“Are those common here?”
He shrugs. “There are a handful each season, I suppose.”
“You should have joined the dance,” I tell him.
“I haven’t your mettle, I fear. Are you feeling better now?”
“Yes.”
He releases me. “I was worried,” he tells me, “when I couldn’t see you through the crowd.”
“Did you think I hadn’t come?”
“I…yes, I suppose I did. I assumed that your sister would be displeased at your disappearance.”
