Page 16 of The Phoenix Bride
I step forward and shrug off my jacket, offering it to her. It is a favorite of mine, silver-green wool, softened with use. She gives it a disdainful look. “I said I was fine.”
“You will catch a chill.”
She ignores this and turns around, walking a loop of the tree. Tucking the jacket beneath my arm, I sit down on one of the iron chairs and gesture to my case. “May I show you the medicines I have brought?” I ask her once she is back in view.
She doesn’t respond. A breeze passes over us, and she shivers.
“Take my jacket,” I say.
“I don’t want it,” she repeats, but her tone is uncertain. She curls her arms around herself.
I toss the jacket at her. She catches it and huffs in annoyance, but she still puts it on. Meanwhile, I open my case and put the bottles on the edge of the fountain. She watches me, but still doesn’t approach.
“May I ask you a question?” I say.
She narrows her eyes. “That depends on what it is.”
“On the gates of the townhouse, there are carved some strange pinecones. I couldn’t identify them. Do you know what they are?”
“Pinecones,” she says, frowning. She spends a good while considering this. Then she splutters. “You—you mean the pineapples?”
“Pineapples,” I repeat, mystified, and she nods. “These are a fruit?”
“Yes.”
“Are they common in England? All my years here, I have never seen them.”
She shakes her head. “They are foreign.”
“From where?”
“I don’t know. Robert had one imported last month. China, probably.”
I say, “China must be a country even stranger than I had imagined, if they are able to grow apples on gates.”
At that she laughs properly, turning her head away as if to stop me from seeing. As she does so, her hand flutters over her belly as if it hurts from the movement; I make a mental note to revise the dosage of the centaury decoction.
Once she recovers, she says, “May I ask you a question, Master Mendes?”
“Of course.”
“Where do you come from?”
“Aldgate.” Seeing her suffering look, I relent. “I was born in Portugal. Have you ever been?”
“Oh no. I’ve never left England. I imagine you’re far better traveled than I.”
“I haven’t traveled that much. I have only seen Lisbon, and Granada, and here.”
“Granada?”
“Yes.” She is inching closer now—clearly compelled by the topic—so I continue. “A city in the south of Spain. It is very beautiful.”
She sits down in the chair opposite me, cocking her head. “Is it different from London?”
“Extremely so. Different from Lisbon, also. There is nowhere else like it. There is a castle there, called Alhambra, a Moorish building with walls of orange and white. When the sun falls upon it, it lights the land gold. There are great plains beneath, and mountains of orange stone. Their color spreads across the grass.”
Her eyes pass beyond my shoulder, as if looking somewhere far away. Her lashes flutter, lids drooping; it occurs to me that she is very beautiful, and—horrified I would allow myself such a thought—I look down at the curlicued ironwork of the table.
