Page 60 of The Phoenix Bride
I recall the husband and wife on the streets of London, the dancers, the music. “Will we have a pageant, then?” I ask her, and she laughs.
“You are a genteel widow remarrying,” she replies. “Not the countess bride of a duke. But there will be a banquet, very grand, and that will be more than enough.”
The next morning, I find myself at the mercy of a horde of tailors, who poke at me with needles and take my measurementsas physicians once did; I am to be remade entirely. New stays, new bust, new shoes, new life. As well as a new deportment for court, I am to be made a wedding dress: a gown of watered silk, pale blue, trimmed with gold lace and a thread of pea-sized pearls. I will be permitted to wear my old wedding pearls in my ears, to match the dress, but the necklace is to be a gift from Sam. It is a collar of sapphires and diamonds, once his mother’s. Sam gives it to me on a velvet pillow, and it is so heavy I can hardly lift it up.
And there is the ring, too, of course. Sam brings that alongside the necklace. It is gold with no less than seven diamonds, the centerpiece rose-cut and clearer than water. It is a little too small, but he assures me we will have it resized. When I take it off, it leaves a red ring like a brand below my knuckle—the ghost of the ring still around my finger.
Once the tailors leave, it is on to the florists for my bridal garland. We are told it is an awkward time for flowers, too late in the season for many of the usual choices. I ask if I might have linden, then, and the florist is alarmed. Best avoided, he informs us, as it was the choice for pagan marriages, in those barbaric days before Christ. Margaret crosses herself.
My sister and the florist settle on larkspur for purity, and asters for faithfulness. Once he is gone, I ask who will be invited to the banquet. Margaret is vague in her response, stating only that there will be “many guests of consequence.”
“Will we invite anyoneIknow?” I ask her. “Or only your friends at court?”
She gives me a pitying look. “Who would youliketo invite, Cecilia?”
I pause at that. I could invite Will’s sisters, but we were never close, and they associate me too strongly with his loss. Myfriends in Suffolk are all married now—we haven’t spoken since I was widowed—and I am suddenly struck with the totality of my isolation.
My silence is response enough. Margaret pats my arm.
“You will like the ladies at court,” she tells me. “Many of them read as much as you do, and they enjoy music.”
There is to be a salon next week that thekingis attending; she insists that we will all go, her and Robert and me and Sam. The thought makes me feel sick. I was raised on stories of Charles and his brave flight from the Roundhead forces—hiding in the boughs of an oak tree to avoid detection, passing himself off as a servant, sleeping in a farmer’s hut. My mother had the king’s portrait above the mantelpiece, spent the years of the commonwealth hosting secret Royalist meetings in the wine cellar. When I was a child, it was a constant fancy of mine that I would meet His Majesty someday and play harpsichord for him. Sometimes I’d ask Margaret to pretend to be him, and she’d put on a footman’s wig and a paper crown. Once the piece was finished, she would cry,Brava, brava!while stamping her foot. Now she speaks of him as if he is a casual acquaintance. It feels utterly extraordinary.
—
That night, I cannot sleep. I rise from my bed and consider going to the music room, but I cannot wake the rest of the household with music. Instead, I go to the library. It is an impressive space, far more extravagant than any other such room I have seen: books stretch from floor to ceiling in soldier-like rows, austere and awaiting orders. Between each bookcase, there are plinths displaying illuminated manuscripts, interrupted by the occasional marble bust. Their morose, stony expressions make themappear like reluctant invaders in a room otherwise populated by pages.
On the back wall, a large mirror reflects my silhouette back to me, and a set of opulent red chairs sits huddled by the unlit fireplace. The air smells of paper and tea. I wander past the shelves, trailing my fingers over the books’ leather spines. Catullus, Hobbes, Aquinas; so many men, so many words, and yet the thin layer of dust on each volume proves they are forgotten. When I die, there won’t be any books with my name in them—only a gravestone.Here lies Cecilia Grey.
I pull out a random book to find a discourse on coffee drinking, then I notice the volume shelved beside it:The Present State of the Jews, Wherein Is Contained an Exact Account of Their Customs, Secular and Religious.I take that book instead, and when I see the table of contents, I can’t help myself—I turn to the section on weddings.
There is a form of marriage contract,it reads,in present use among all the Jews, whereof we have a Copy translated by Cornelius Bertram out of the Babylon Talmud. And these contracts being signed, the Woman from that time forward becomes the man’s Wife. To this form of honoring and worshiping the marriage, the contract alludes to the Song of Solomon, reading: I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine.
I imagine Sam and me at the altar, his mother’s sapphires like an oxen’s yoke around my neck, the priest imploring my future obedience.I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine.
I remember Will and me in the same position, years ago, him smiling at me; the dappled sunlight through the window of the country church; the whoops and hollers of our families as he bowed down to kiss me.I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine.
And then, inevitably, I think of David. I think of how the stars cast pinpricks of light in his dark eyes that night, and theway his mouth felt on mine, his hand curling around my waist, the heat of his breath, the smell of the grass and the darkness. I feel the ache of wanting him to travel from my heart to my hips. I lean against the bookcase and close my eyes.
I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine.
After the third night of alehouses in a row, Jan can tell something is wrong. As we stumble out onto the street, he takes my hand.
“Do you remember the night we met, David?” he asks.
I remember, of course. It was a summer evening much like this one, three years ago. I had drunk too much wine at a seder, and afterward I went to a molly house named Mother Tiffin’s. There I met a beautiful man who had promised me comfort, and I had acted on desires I had long acknowledged but thought controlled. Once I’d sobered enough to understand what I had done, I’d stumbled outside the door and slumped down to the curb, burying my face in my knees. Jan had followed me out, concerned about the stranger who had fled the place with tears in his eyes. The initial introductions had been uncertain, uncomfortable, but then he’d asked me, “Do you like coffee?” and I had replied that I did. We went to his house, and he kissed me by the front door, mostly to get it out of the way; it felt so unnaturaland awkward that we fell about laughing immediately after. I spent the day with him roasting coffee beans. He told me absurd stories about his life that were mostly fiction. I told him about my work, and my father, and my life in Lisbon.
“I have known you for years now,” Jan continues. “And I—I just…I am concerned for you.”
“It’s nothing”
He says, “It isn’t nothing. It clearly isn’t. Let’s meet tomorrow morning at the coffeehouse, when our heads are clearer. Then we can speak of it, yes?”
Concern is so deeply etched into his brow, in the insistence of his grip, that I can do nothing except nod.
“Good,” he says. “Surely there is nothing that cannot be fixed with the ear of an old friend.”
—
