Page 57 of The Duke
The sophisticated quality that came from Celine’s depth of experience, her quick mind and faceted personhood, was nowhere to be found. She was like a child.
Kate felt a repulsive embarrassment, and she was moved in a way that felt literal: an internal rearrangement, a melting, a brightening, a creation myth taking place somewhere in her guts.
After a long silence, Celine spoke again, composed now, and this time it was somehow as though she were the parent and Kate the child. “When I am married,” Celine said, “I’ll have people whowill come and sit with me when I’m sick, who will bring me broth and tell me I’m not dying and tell me how glad they are that I’m still here. Do not imagine desire, or even romantic love, holds any sway over me.”
She turned and walked away, somehow still upright, somehow still moving. A thin, unsteady figure making her way alone, catching herself occasionally on the wall. Then she stumbled, and stopped, and fell heavily against the wall. Kate started running and caught Celine just before she hit the floor.
She gathered the unconscious body into her arms and stood. Full of a hot and helpless rage she looked down at the woman she held, and in her brand-new heart, Celine’s words resounded:Who on this earth will tell me how glad they are that I’m still here?
Part ThreeMORE GORGEOUS THAN THE MOON
The light had gone out of the world. She was insensate. Then, sickeningly, the world writhed into motion, and it was made of hands. It reached for her incessantly. It nauseated her, the world in motion like water, but instead of being wet, it was made of hands, so many hands. She smelled hemp and rot and threw up.
She didn’t feel any better.
Every awareness was stomach-churning. She was on the ship from
Dieppe,
suffocating
in wool. The ship rose and fell. The tedium made her want to vomit again. She was in a bed, throwing off the covers, flaccid
and panting
and spent. It raged in her. It wouldn’t let her go.
Someone was moaning. Just awful. Put that animal down.
“Celine, you must drink the medicine.”
She jerked her face away.
A hand came implacably around her jaw and forced her mouth open. She spat the bitter medicine out. Her eyes were burning candles, lighting the whole room. Everything was hot. On fire. Everything was strangling her. She struggled.
“Get me more.” A grim voice that expected to be obeyed. “Hold her down.”
A movement of the mattress she understood from long experience: Someone had knelt across her waist. This time, that cruel hand forced her mouth shut around the medicine.
She swallowed.
The hand gentled, and now there were two: two thumbs stroking her cheeks, one set of lips by her ear. “Thank you. Thank you, Celine. The medicine will help.”
Her mother’s hands wrapped her delicately, winding her in wool, turning Celine over and over between her hands in the rhythm of a daily task.
Wash.
Peel.
Sew.
Pick blackberries from between thorns, again and again and again. Prick, prick, prick. Stained with juice like a bloodletting.
Winding. Turning. Covering. Smothering. All the heat in her body building with nowhere to escape, until she, enclosed in wool, could have heated a castle.
How precious. Perhaps she should be strung on a necklace and worn close to the heart.
She lay in darkness. She was cold, then hot. Voices spoke over her.
