30. Phoebe

P HOEBE Great St Bartholomew's, London, 21st June 1613

I T FELT STRANGE TO be standing in this house without my father here. The rooms all had a different feel, and echoes sang where I could not remember ever hearing them. The floorboards creaked behind me.

Andrew asked, ‘D'ye have everything ye need?'

I smiled faintly, for that question had a double meaning in my view. I turned, and leaned into the arms he offered me, my head against the shelter of his chest. ‘I do.'

He meant my clothing, and the few belongings that we'd come to gather so that I could have them at his family's house. My house, now, too. Aunt Agnes had been living there since we'd been gone, and had already settled in. This morning, in the small hours, when we'd straggled in exhausted after our ride here from Greenwich, I'd expected that the Logan house would be shuttered and dark.

Instead I'd found Aunt Agnes sitting up with Andrew's mother, waiting for us. ‘I just had a feeling,' Andrew's mother said, which left me wondering about this Second Sight and how it might be passed down in the blood.

‘Can women have it?' I'd asked Andrew, as I'd tried to keep my eyes from drifting closed.

He had been busy dressing Hector's shoulder while the boy was sleeping. ‘I don't know.'

‘Well, does your mother have it?'

Andrew's pause told me he'd never entertained the thought. ‘I don't know.'

‘Mayhap you should ask her.'

That was all I could remember of our conversation. I had slept, and when I woke it was already afternoon. Andrew was busy, and the day was full.

But now, we had this moment to ourselves, while Hector and Aunt Agnes and his mother were yet in the Logans' house, with Brutus and the Garron stabled safely in the stalls below.

Evening was drawing in. The shadows slanted long across the walls, and touched the portrait of King James my father once had been so proud of, gifted to him by my lord Northampton. Perhaps it, too, had been a reward for some business my father did that had been less than kind.

I knew I'd not feel sad to let this house go, when the lease ran out, because it felt wrong living in a home that had been gained by such deception.

Something curious was happening. The whole room wavered, for an instant. Then it faded at its edges, and became another chamber, in another place.

King James, instead of standing stiffly in his portrait, turned – a living, breathing man – and said, ‘Our choices, Logan, can have unforeseen effects.'

I found those words unsettling, as much from the way he said them as from what was said, but even as I registered the tone in which he spoke, the room regained its proper form.

I looked at Andrew. He'd been gazing at the portrait of King James, and I could see his eyes just now were losing their unfocused stare.

‘All is well,' he reassured me, when he saw my worry and he realized that I'd Seen what he was Seeing. ‘I don't always See the whole of things. And anyway, whatever is yet coming, we will weather it.' He turned me in his arms so he could look me in the face, and lightly traced my cheek. ‘I am an oak, remember? I do stand against all dangers.'

He kissed me, and the room began to fade for reasons other than the Second Sight, and when he raised his head he said, ‘We've not yet had our wedding night.'

His breathing was, I noticed, as uneven as my own.

I said, ‘I know.'

‘Which of these chambers does belong to ye?'

So then I finally saw the scars he'd shown to but a few, and in return he saw the heart I'd never shown a man at all. I'd known already that he could be fierce and tender all at once, but I'd not known the half of it. And afterwards, he wrapped me in the blankets and his body, and we closed the world away from us, and for that moment – just that moment – all was truly well.