Page 88 of The Phoenix Bride
The first: Cecilia Lockwood, whose fifteen-minute delay left Margaret with the dowry and herself with an abundance of precociousness. Youngest sister, youngest daughter. The sort with the cheek not only to covet another’s fiancé, but to marry him, also; who went to church in feathered hats and pastel gowns simply out of a desire to be interesting; who laughed while she danced at her wedding and ate so much cake she was sick withit.
Then came Cecilia Thorowgood, whose swallow heart swooped from joy to grief and back again. She knew the greatest happiness of all my lives, and the greatest sorrows, also. For all her fragility, she survived plague and fire and heartbreak. But she could not survive herself, and the decisions she made. There is some irony in that.
Because now I am Cecilia Grey: elevated higher than any of her predecessors, and laid lower, also. The afternoon after the fire, David leaves with Jan in a borrowed carriage, braving the ashen streets rather than remain with me. An hour later, I marry a friend for no reason other than convenience, signing my name on a contract witnessed by a single well-paid priest and my newhusband’s butler. Afterward, we have a feast of partridge and wine. I eat only three bites, stomach squirming with grief and guilt.
“Sam, this is too much,” I tell him, staring down at my plate.
“Oh?” He looks over the groaning table. “Yes, I suppose you’re right. You needn’t finish it all.”
“I didn’t mean the food. I meant—what you’ve done for me.”
“Nonsense, Cecilia,” he says. “The house in Kent is such a lonely place usually. I did not want to spend Christmas alone, and I am so glad to have company. I already told you, I never wanted to be married; I’d much rather have a friend than a wife. And now you are both, and yet not both—it is odd, I know, but I am glad of it.”
“Very well,” I say uncertainly. His smile looks genuine enough, but the guilt is suffocating, still. I spend the rest of the meal fiddling with my cutlery, unable to eat.
Once we are finished, I retire to the harpsichord room. The house is abuzz with activity as the servants pack things up for the move to the estate. Instead of playing, I sit on one of the audience chairs, my head in my hands, listening to the chatter and rumble of their work.
I do not know how long I am there for. I am silent and not weeping; it seems the well of tears has finally run dry. But the sun does eventually set entirely, and I am soon concealed by darkness.
A beam of light emerges from an open door. Someone enters the room, a little uncertain in their open-backed mules, pink-ribboned stockings bunched at the heels.
Sam sits next to me and lays a hand on my back.
“Let me tell you something,” he says.
I never imagined he would ask for permission to say anything. I give him a sideways glance. “What is it?”
“Well,” he replies. “I think I ought to tell you everything.”
Then Sam squares his shoulders, stares directly at the harpsichord, and tells me everything. He tells me about a boy from a noble family in Kent, whose fevered mother refused to pass him to the midwife for inspection once he was born—knowing, perhaps, that she would not live long enough to see the sunset that night. So Sam was raised by his father, who was distant and often absent, and by governesses: a great crowd of them who came and left as quickly as mayflies.
“The only time Father ever wished to see me,” Sam says, “was when he had made a discovery. He considered himself a natural philosopher, you see. He was always showing me illustrations from books and new inventions. He spoke Arabic and Hebrew and dozens of other languages.” He paused. “It was a disappointment to him, I think, that I didn’t inherit his mind. He tried to teach me mathematics once and got so frustrated at my failure he almost cried.”
“Like my mother,” I reply. “When she wanted me to sing.”
Then, in stuttered and hesitant terms—prompted gently by the occasional question—I describe my own upbringing: my sister and my mother, our women’s house, how centered our lives were around Maggie’s marriage, Maggie’s beauty, Maggie’s income. And when Sam replies to speak of his father’s death, andhis first days at court—the terror he felt, the sense of unworthiness—I talk about Will. I tell Sam how I loved William Thorowgood from afar, about my joy when we were finally married. I tell him about the wedding and the dancing and the awful portrait. About our brief and wonderful life in the Thorowgood manor, which was not perfect, but still happy.
I tell Sam about Will himself, who had a gap-toothed smile and a ceaseless reservoir of joy. “He was sunshine,” I say. “He was laughter and comfort. He was so young. We both were.” Idescribe how Will hummed as he walked, how in the evenings he would read plays aloud and do different voices for each character. I tell Sam how Will grew sick, how the buboes came, the shuddering, the seizing, how his sisters and I all huddled about the door and said,Soon, it shall pass. How Will slept and slept, and how it happened, finally, while I was sitting beside him, reading, holding his hand.
I tell Sam that I felt as if it was my fault. I knew it was not, but I felt as if it was. Sometimes I feel that way still.
It all pours out of me. I cannot prevent the words from escaping in a great torrent, while Sam listens with his chin resting on his fist, patient and fascinated. I describe how I continued to live in that house like a ghost, and how Margaret had at first seemed to offer some escape from my grief. But then Will remained with me, and the memory of him filled my belly so I could not eat, and Margaret offered no solace at all.
And then I tell him about David, about the linden and the canal, the coffeehouse, the night in Saint James’s Park. How I began to love him, despite it all; how his leaving feels like an amputation. How I do not know who I am now that he has gone.
At that, finally, Sam responds.
“You are Cecilia still,” he says. “David leaving doesn’t change that, I think. And marrying me doesn’t change it, either.”
I wipe a tear from my face. “You really think so?”
“I know so,” he replies. “And I know it is a privilege to be your friend. You have been very brave. I could only aspire to such courage.”
“You are brave, too, Sam.”
“Oh, I hope so. I haven’t faced a tenth of the trials you have, so I suppose it is difficult to tell.” He smiles at me, earnest and eager. “We are going to have to spend a lot of time together; Iam happy about that. You are my best friend. We haven’t known each other for very long, but I think you are.”
“You, too,” I say. “You are mine.”
