Page 8 of The Phoenix Bride
Besides, I am a doctor, and here is a patient who needs me. I can sense Lady Eden’s desperation, in the slanting spikes of her hand, the half-smudged ink of her signature. It is hardly an obsequious letter—more patronizing than anything else, really—but I am inclined to sympathy.My sister is suffering,it says.She will not eat, will not smile. She is a ghost of herself, and you, sir, are my final recourse. I fear that this is more than grief. She has a sickness, and it must be cured.
“I will go tomorrow,” I say. “Let us hope that this Mistress Thorowgood is not beyond saving.”
I have been in London for 134 days.
It is summer here, sweltering and unrelenting. In Suffolk, summer was a litany of small comforts: the scent of dried hay hanging sweet in the air, Will’s laughter in the orchard, lurid blooms of larkspur in the garden. But there are no such comforts here. In the city, summer means stink, and my window is shut fast to prevent the smell reaching my bedroom. Margaret has worked so hard to approximate my old life: she has put fresh flowers in the vases; given me silk sheets in the pale blue of an unclouded sky; strewn lavender across my windowsill.
When I close my eyes, I am permitted a temporary transportation to another time, another place. As brief as a breath, I am standing in the heather, and Will is waiting for me.
But I must open my eyes eventually. And then I am reminded of where I am:hereis not Suffolk, with its hay and larkspur.Hereis my sister’s townhouse, sitting heavy as a tombstone in Saint James’s. This is a hungry place, a starving one, sucking all of its surroundings into it. The sky pinches at its edges, pavementfalling to meet its foundations, like water into a drain. In a city so crowded, it feels unimaginable that space could be found for such an enormous construction. And yet this neighborhood is full of identical buildings: layer cakes of stone and wealth, with iron fencing and red-coated footmen.
The interior of the townhouse is just as offensive, with narrow hallways and spiraling, white-stoned staircases. Every corridor grows another and another, closing like teeth, braiding like hair. The only part of it that doesn’t threaten to swallow me whole is the courtyard, and that is where I spend most of my time. It is the nearest I can get to the past. Fresh air and the scent of linden, the soft burble of the fountain—eyes closed, head tipped back to meet the sky, I go somewhere else, somewhere three years ago. I hear my sister’s voice.Be happy, Cecilia. You are blessed.
I have been in London for 134 days. I hate this place, I hate this city. I hate its crowds and its stink; I hate that I am trapped within it; I hate that it killed Will, and yet I have returned to it. I hate, I hate, I hate. And I hate Margaret sometimes, too, despite myself. I hate that she was given all the good fortune between us, to keep her husband, to be the eldest, to be pretty enough that a man as wealthy as Robert Eden took one look at her at a party and had her betrothal dissolved as easily and sweetly as sugar in tea.
I shouldn’t resent her for it. She invited me here, and I came to London with open, searching arms, desperate for absolution. It hasn’t absolved me, of course. Perhaps I have betrayed Will by ever hoping it would. But someday, the city might do the same to me as it did to him and lay me in my grave.
I hope it does. In that, at least, there seems some justice.
—
I have had many physicians in the time I have been at the Eden townhouse. My most recent was Master Percy. He was old and gaunt, with a round, moonlike face, surrounded by wisps of white hair like separated clouds. But when Margaret enters my room without him this morning, expression apologetic, I know that she has dismissed him.
Impatience: a trait we both share, and one that has been our downfall many times. “Again?” I ask, raising a brow.
“He wasn’t helping,” Margaret replies. “And you didn’t like him, besides.”
Of course I didn’t like him: Wholikestheir physician? But Master Percy was less objectionable than some of the others, and I feel sorry to see him gone, if merely for the possibility of a worse replacement. Every time I get a new physician, I have to speak to them of my symptoms—the nausea, the occasional vomiting, the light-headedness, the shortness of breath—and hear them offer the same diagnoses in return: ulcers, colic, even hysteria. None of their treatments work. I don’t know why Margaret expects they will. They are only physicians, after all, and medicine can’t cure loss.
“I have discussed the matter with Robert,” Margaret tells me, “and he felt it may be necessary to consult someone with…alternative expertise.”
I’m not certain why Robert has a say—the man has spoken fewer than a dozen words to me since I came here—but I can hardly protest, considering he is providing my bed and board. “Alternative expertise?”
“The methods taught in England are sound, of course, but there are a great variety of physicians in London who have been trained elsewhere.”
“You want to employ a foreigner?” I ask, surprised.
Her eyes flit guiltily to the corner of the room. “Robert founda man well known for treating disorders of the stomach. I wrote to him yesterday, and he shall be here soon.”
I say, “I need some respite, Maggie. I don’t want another doctor prodding me.”
“If it is what you need, then you will bear it,” Margaret replies.
I bristle. Margaret fears for my well-being—fears I am mad—and she doesn’t trust me to take care of myself. I know that I am unwell, that is clear enough: I can’t eat, can’t smile, can’t speak except either to be cruel or apologize. On the worst days, I am so terrified and furious that it sickens me as would poison, as would something rotten or curdled, and I vomit after I eat. But my body is my own, it always will be. I have had enough of strangers’ interventions, and I am exhausted by the thought of more leeches and tinctures.
“I won’t see him,” I say. “I refuse.”
Margaret scowls. “Be reasonable, Cecilia.”
“I am being reasonable. I am so tired of it all. I am bled so often I can hardly stand; my food is bitter with medicine; I sleep so much I can’t tell reality from dreams. What life is this?”
“Alife, at least, which is more than you would give yourself without my help.”
“I am not—”
“The world is passing you by,” Margaret says, her voice wavering. “You are so young. My heart breaks for you. A few more weeks of suffering, for a permanent resurrection—it is worth it, surely?”
“I can recover in my own time.”
