Page 24 of The Phoenix Bride
With my other hand, I play the melody a third time. As I do so, I feel the notes press themselves into my memory, and I feel David Mendes joining them. I think,Oh, I will never see him again—never,and I feel a sudden ache within myself, grief for a possibility dead before it could be born.Don’t,I want to say, but don’t…what? Don’t leave? Don’t stay?
“Lovely,” he says quietly. “The melody, I mean.”
“I…I’m glad you like it.”
Mendes steps back from the spinet. My arm falls to my side.
“My thanks,” he says, his voice somewhat strained. “For the demonstration.”
“It was no trouble.”
He clears his throat. “I’d like to pray, if you would permit it.”
“What?”
He rubs the back of his neck with his hand. “I would like to pray for your recovery, your continuing health. With some of my patients…it is a tradition, I suppose.”
“Oh. Of course. Do I need to do something?”
“Pardon,” he says. “I shouldn’t have— No matter. Could I take your hand again?”
Confused, I nod, stepping forward to offer him my palm. He cups it in his own. He is careful to keep the contact chaste, his skin barely brushing mine. But I can still feel the warmth of him, and the faint rasp of the calluses on his fingertips. His sleeve rides up, revealing his forearm: it is thatched with dark hair,interrupted by a trio of moles near his wrist. His hands are broad, and they swallow mine entirely. Something treacherous and wanting curls around the base of my stomach.
Mendes murmurs to himself in Hebrew, a half-sung whisper that holds no more meaning to me than the tone of the spinet keys. It is beautiful, all the same.
Once he is finished, he says, “Farewell, Cecilia. May you be blessed. May you be restored, in soul and in body.”
He releases me.
“Farewell, Master Mendes,” I reply.
Then he bows, turns away, and leaves my life just as he entered it: on a summer day in the Eden townhouse, in a house that is not my own, in a city I cannot forgive.
The night after my last appointment with Cecilia Thorowgood, I go with Jan to an alehouse. It is packed, and Jan soons falls into a spirited debate with a pair of gentlemen upon the worthiness of public libraries. I watch them and allow the noise and the crowd to distract me. We consume several hours there, and several more mugs of sack. I return home very late, still stumbling.
The house is quiet and dark. My father and Elizabeth Askwith must be asleep. I go to the kitchen, where I pour myself some water, using the moonlight from the window to see by. My reflection in the cup is haggard and frowning. I feel a sudden and sincere hatred for my face, ghoulish in the harsh shadows. I tip the rest of the water down my throat, tossing the cup aside.
In the garden, the air is cool now that the sun is hidden, and I find myself shivering. I go to inspect the glass beads hanging from the wall hooks. In the darkness there is no light to reflect upon them. They are clear and colorless against the brick, likefrozen tears, each scarred with the reflection of the white feathers between them. I lift a strand and drop it, listening to it clatter against the wall. I remember Manuel gifting them to me, bashful as he pressed the pouch into my hands.It isn’t much,he’d said—he’d always denied his kindnesses as he performed them. When I pulled the glass out, it was still warm from his grip. The feathers were dyed colors then; the sunlight has since bleached them. In Portuguese,penameans feather, but it also means pity, punishment, pain. An unfortunate omen.
I suddenly feel very foolish. It is clear that I am sulking. Drinking always puts me in a foul mood, and I shouldn’t have indulged this evening. Leaving the beads be, I take a final gulp of the air before returning to the kitchen. Aware of my impending hangover, I guzzle two more glasses of water and take a swallow of a milk-thistle decoction.
I remind myself that I must sleep, so I ascend the steps to my bedroom. Untying my breeches and my sleeves, I go to remove my doublet, and then realize—with no more reminder than the press of my fingers against ivory buttons—that I gave Cecilia Thorowgood my favorite jacket, my soft green wool jacket, which I bought one week after arriving in London, and which has withstood a decade of English weather. I have left it with her, and the only way I can get it back is to return to the Eden townhouse and request its return.
But I cannot go back. I was too much of a coward to tell her what her sister planned for her, and perhaps I owed that to her, perhaps I still do, despite our mutual powerlessness. Still, I remember the fear in her eyes hours ago as I told her goodbye. I cannot bear to witness it another time. I remember her fingers sprawled across the keys of the spinet, her slow smile as she played her song. I remember the feeling of her hand in mine, thebird wing fragility of her bones and tendons, contracting in automatic response to my touch—her cold fingertips brushing over my palm. I remember the tremor in her voice as she said,Farewell, Master Mendes.
She still has my jacket.
It is hers now.
—
I spend my morning crushing rose hips with a mortar and pestle for a batch order of poultices. They stain my hands red as ripe apples, and the air in the kitchen fills with the summer scent of dying flowers and dry earth. My father sits at the table, reading.
The poultice is jarred and stored in the cupboard. As I start to wash the pot, someone knocks soundly upon the front door. I go to answer, precluding Elizabeth Askwith, who reaches halfway down the steps and then turns away, huffing, as she sees me approach. She often complains I do not give her enough work to do. We are similar in that regard: We both are best kept occupied.
“Sara,” I say, surprised when I see the woman on the doorstep. She is in her best dress, a deep purple brocade. Her hair has been pinned back, twisted elaborately above her ears. She wears amber earrings, and she holds the basket I used to bring her tarts while she was sitting shiva.
Sara presents the basket to me. “I thought to return this,” she says.
