Page 18 of The Phoenix Bride
“They are great burdens to bear, these bodies of ours,” I say. “Miracles, but burdens, also. They are complex machines, andeach part must work together for them to function. Just as an injury to an organ might cause the machine to fail, so might an injury to the soul.”
“It wasn’t only an injury,” she says. “It feels worse than that. It feels like a death. I feel like I died with him.”
I don’t know who Cecilia is speaking of. But I understand her meaning, far better than I wish I did—and reflected in her face, I see myself as much as I see her. I see myself the day I lost Manuel, the day I left Lisbon; I see David Mendes one year ago, looking at himself in the mirror as the city died around him. Sometimes I tell myself I have left that haunted man behind. And yet he is here still, in a stranger’s home, with a stranger’s blue-gray eyes, and a stranger’s grief pulled around him like a tallith.
I approach her, placing the glass of water on the bedside table. Reaching forward, I take her arm very gently, pressing my fingers to her wrist.
She stares at me until I pull away.
“Your heart beats, Cecilia,” I say. “You are living still.”
She doesn’t respond. I gesture to the water and tell her, “Drink. I will send for breakfast. What would you like?”
“Nothing,” she replies. I frown, and she sighs. “Some bread and cheese, I suppose.”
I bow to her. She is still wearing my jacket, but I can’t bring myself to demand its return. She is shivering, frail and exhausted, paler than ivory. It is warm enough outside; I shall retrieve it when I next come to examine her.
Cecilia exhales a long, shuddering breath. She stares down at her wrist, where my fingers had pressed against her pulse. “Forgive me,” she says. “I acted childishly today. I have enough enemies in my mind alone; I needn’t create another in you, Master Mendes. You have done nothing to deserve the misfortune of my company.”
This is so unexpected I gawp at her, and reply with only, “Oh.” A smile flickers over her face, brief as a gust of wind.
“I am cruel, sometimes,” she says. “Forgive me for it. There is an anger inside of me, and it is eating me alive. Like your parasite growing upon the thyme. I wish I knew how to remove it.”
“We will find a way,” I reply. “Will you take the decoctions?”
“I don’t know. Some of them. Not the one for melancholy.”
I nod—it is the best I could hope for, considering. “Will you allow me to return?”
“Yes,” she says, plucking at the sheets with her fingers. “Very well. If you must.”
“Then I shall.”
She gives me a wary look, eyes searching. It is as if she has sensed my inadequacy, as if she has realized I am afflicted by the same sickness she is. Loss, grief, melancholy—perhaps she is correct, and these are all symptoms without cure.
Then the suspicion fades from her expression, and she smiles at me hesitantly. I smile back. Something like peace passes between us. Her face no longer seems cruel to me, not as it did the first time we met. Her features are still sharp, and yet they are now softened, like sea glass, weathered by the tides. A victory, no matter how small.
Then, unbidden, I remember her sister in that jewel-carpeted foyer, the ticking of the pearl-faced clock.Married before the fall,Lady Eden had said.
Perhaps not a victory, after all.
David Mendes returns three more times that week. We meet in the courtyard, upon my insistence, where he ensures I take my decoctions—except the one for melancholy, which he will not force upon me, although I can tell he wishes to. He watches me walk around the linden tree, asks me how I am feeling, and then leaves. All in all, we spend less than an hour together each day. We remain only oddly familiar strangers, with Margaret watching us from the side of the courtyard, pretending to scribble in her commonplace book.
One morning, as usual, I take my decoctions and begin my circuits around the tree. Mendes stands beside the fountain and watches me. He always waits a little while after I have taken the medicine; I suppose to see if I will keep it down.
“Why do you always do that?” Mendes asks me as I finish my first loop.
“Do what?”
“Walk around the tree?”
“If I didn’t, I would forget how to walk at all,” I tell him. “There is nowhere else to go.”
When I make another turn and see his face again, he looks perturbed. “What about outside?”
“We are outside.”
He sighs. “Outside the townhouse, I mean.”
