Page 72 of The Phoenix Bride
“Not yet. But the flames are.”
“You are injured,” I say.
“I was caught in a crush on the way. I think my ankle is broken. It took me hours to get here.” He shakes his head. “It is bad, David. It spreads too fast. I had to leave my house. I fear it will reach you, also.”
“Do you know how it started?”
“No one does,” he replies. “But it hardly matters now.”
I look over his shoulder. The red glow in the sky has spread further, stretching upward, like blood seeping through a bandage. “I’ll treat your wounds, first,” I say. I open the door wider and gesture for him to come inside. “Then I think we ought to leave.”
He puts an arm around me and follows me indoors, leaning heavily on my shoulder. In the kitchen, Elizabeth Askwith helps me prepare a poultice for Jan’s cuts. She is even more churlish than usual, pacing the kitchen while I set his ankle, glaring at the window. “I shall not leave, David Mendes,” she says, “until you and Master van Essen leave, also.”
I am touched. “Thank you, Elizabeth.”
She looks nervously at Jan’s ankle, which is swollen purple-red. “ ’Haps I should seek a cart to hire.”
“You can try,” Jan says. “But there are few to be had. I heard some are charging more than forty pounds for passage.”
She blanches, but says resolutely, “I’ll negotiate.”
“Return within the hour if you have no luck,” I tell her. “Take no risks.”
She nods curtly and disappears into the hall.
Jan presses a finger to his split lip. “It’s all gone, David,” he says quietly. “All my things. And the city…the cathedral, the bridges…”
I wrap my arms around him. He shudders and presses his wet eyes into my shoulder.
We begin packing the things too precious to leave: recipe books, medical equipment, the tefillin, mezuzahs and the menorah, clothing for the winter, and what ingredients I can keep dried. Eventually, Elizabeth Askwith returns stone-faced. Thereare no carts to be had. Resourcefully, she had also gone to the river, seeking a barge; the only one available wanted two hundred pounds to take us. I don’t make so much money in a year.
Someone knocks again. This time it is Sara, who lives only a few doors down from us. I feel ashamed I hadn’t thought of her earlier. Ihaven’tthought of her, I realize, since I sat shiva for my father; grief has made me callous.
She looks over my shoulder to see the bags stacked by the staircase.
“You are leaving?” Sara asks me.
“Soon.”
“Where will you go?”
“I don’t know. Anywhere there is ground to sleep on, I suppose. You?”
She pauses, gives me a long, inscrutable look, and says, “That depends. My cousin’s home is in Mile End, and he can house me. I can walk there.”
“You should go, then.”
“I—” She swallows, looks away. “But I could also stay here. With you.”
I don’t know what to say. I hover in the doorway, the city in flames around us, and I can think of no better response than, “It is dangerous.”
“Yes, obviously,” she snaps. Then she rubs her neck, clearly ashamed at her own annoyance. “It is a bad time for me to ask you this—”
“Yes, it is.”
“—but I must. I have been giving you time, after your father…I know, of course, how difficult it is. But I am beginning to feel as if you have been avoiding me. As if you will never give me an answer to my proposal, unless I demand one face-to-face.”
“I haven’t been avoiding you.”
