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It was to be a happy union, William and Elizabeth’s. In temperament they were alike; in habits they were compatible, and though William’s studies concerned only business, they found a quiet satisfaction in sitting beside one another in their reading. His theology led him to favor grace over punishment, which Elizabeth had found to be a rarity among men, especially in this time of war. How many gentlemen, both young and old, had she heard pontificating on the fever of battle and the glory of victory? It seemed to them that soldiers served no purpose but to be the nameless objects of story, that their existence began and ended with the war.
William had been the first to listen to her when she said as much. He had not encouraged the sentiment, was not moved by the same spirit that prodded her to speak, but neither had he scoffed at her frailty. He said nothing when others offered only reprimand, and she grew to believe that silence was the best response she could expect. Elizabeth was grateful for it. And when he began to inquire about her entomological studies, she began to think of him as someone with whom she would not dislike spending her life. Her affections for him were a cool breeze among her turbulent passions. Being with him was like resting. The fact that her uncle heartily approved the match helped to secure her decision to marry William.
Then she met his brother Victor. If William was like resting, then Victor was a sudden waking, a bracing, confusing sensation that set her heart to a faster tempo. He angered her and questioned her, but did not dismiss her; he agitated her by filling her idle thoughts. What others called ugly— her beloved larvae and chrysalides and beetles— of these he had a scholar’s appreciation. He was an engaging, active thing. Stimulating. A bright fire, more beautiful for its wildness. She spent time with him when she could and did not allow herself to question the morality of it. It was not infidelity; neither was it innocent. A shy hope began to grow within her that the stuff of song would be made real to her at last, that this interest, however misplaced, would become the maddening feeling she had always longed for but never felt.
But her affections dimmed as a spark without kindling. Victor had enticed her like a specimen behind glass, fascinating and forbidden; when he made his desires plain, it was as if he had stepped outside his display, and the allure vanished. He was a man no different from any other, his thoughts no more elevated for their singularity, his desires no less coarse for their direction. William had always been the logical choice. It pleased her that logic had won the day.
But something had changed. There was a hollow in her chest, a missing piece she had not noticed until her interest in Victor waned. It ached for want of something she could not name. If neither William nor Victor could fill it, she reasoned, there was no alternative but to live with the emptiness. She was not made for the stuff of song. However much she wanted to be. However close she had come to it. She thanked God for the opportunity to suffer, that she might better understand the weight of sacrifice. If the agony of Christ was made new with her every sin, then her own withered heart was a burden mercifully light to bear. She took comfort in resignation. The upset caused by Victor’s presence in her life would fade. She would resume the path set for her by a more rational self.
That was before the disaster, before she followed that strange whisper of a voice into the cistern, before both her logic and her passions were wrecked upon the unexpected. Before she met the man whose separateness could only be described as Holy. He had taken her hand as others had; he had pulled her to him, but there was something pure in the contact, a curiosity uncorrupted by carnality. He had no ulterior motive, and Elizabeth was free for it; free to return his touch, to engage another being without the burden of propriety. It had been dream-like, their first meeting. Better than a dream to see him again in the soft candlelight with the heavens in an uproar, yet to be safe below ground.
“Isn’t it beautiful?” she said, holding the leaf against the light. “Is this for me?”
His voice was not absent; it lingered in the space between a hum and a groan, but never ventured further. It was the sort of noncommittal sound that would have gotten Elizabeth reprimanded by her teachers when she was a child. They would have told her to either enunciate properly or be silent. But there were no teachers here—only herself and him, and the freedom to express themselves in whatever mode they pleased. She had never felt such liberty in a man’s company. Not Victor’s, not even William’s. Only his.
He touched her hair, letting it separate around his fingers.
“Do you like it?” she said. “I brush it every evening until it shines.”
Elizabeth parted out a section for him, taming down the wayward strands until what he held was smooth and straight. He alternated caressing it with his fingertips and his knuckles, then turned it toward the candles and tilted it back and forth. His eyes followed the copper light across her hair. He let it fall in a cascade. He smiled, gave a small, breathy laugh. His eyelashes were dark against his cheeks.
An hundred years should go to praise
Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze
The verse came to Elizabeth unprompted. The sentiment had seemed excessive to her in the past; now she held those words in her thoughts, turned them before her mind’s eye and found them lacking. No span within the confines of time would be long enough for her to look upon him. To study him. To imagine the story behind each piece of him, the grief of a dozen families crafted into something new and marvelous. No words could adequately describe the sensation that accompanied meeting his dark eyes: that of nothing, and at the same time, everything—of a void heavy with potential, the emptiness before the being, Eureka.
His hand drifted from her hair to the ribbon at her neck. He took one end and rubbed the silk between his fingers. The action pulled it tight, pulled at the bow, but she did not stop him. It came undone with a sudden movement. He flinched. He dropped his hands to the marble between them, his eyes darting everywhere but to hers. His rasping breaths grew short, and she could discern his lips pressing together, his throat bobbing in the shadow of his chin.
“Is something the matter?” she said, and his shoulders tensed at the sound.
He acted—she could not fathom why—as though she might strike him. She wondered at this. Her thoughts flitted to earlier that day when they had crouched across the waterway from one another, when their hands had touched, when he had looked up at Victor and then shied away from her. She understood, then. And the understanding sickened her.
“It’s alright,” she whispered. “You’ve done nothing wrong.”
Still he refused to meet her eyes. She reached out to him, slowly, and lifted his chin. There was something unsure in his expression, something searching. Her heart ached at the sight. Everything in her wanted to comfort him, to return to him that gentle curiosity she admired. She cradled his face, brushing a thumb over his cheek.
“You untied it, that’s all. See? It’s alright. I don’t mind.”
She started to redo the knot, then hesitated. They were among tree-like pillars, the Adam and Eve of a porcelain Eden, clothed in fig leaves despite having no knowledge of sin. The fruit was uneaten, the tree untouched, the garden empty of serpents. Why did she hide? What shame could exist here, in the presence of such innocence?
She pulled open the nightgown and let it fall from her shoulders. He was looking at her, but now she was the one who could not meet his gaze. His hand found her wrist, made its way up her arm, pushed her hair behind her shoulder and followed the line of her collarbone. She shuddered when his fingers traced over her breast. He began to draw away; she pulled him closer, wrapping her arms around his neck. His chest was ice against hers, burning now under the lash of her racing heart. His chin moved against her.
“Eliza…beth,” he murmured.
Four syllables—only four—yet they filled her with a euphoria like that which she only felt when her voice was lifted in worship, a sensation distant from the physical and yet in harmony with it, chest bursting with abundance of breath and the resonance of melody.
“Yes,” she said, tears spilling down her cheeks. “Yes.”
He pressed a hand between her shoulder blades and sought out her spine, touching each vertebrae as though they were stepping stones. She did the same to him. She mirrored every touch, telling him without words what she had known the moment they met: we are the same. She moved to his waist and he followed; she counted his ribs and he laughed. His sides swelled and shrank beneath her palms, and she breathed in harmony with him. The last mote of fear melted as he repeated her name, prayer-like, and he wrapped her tight in his arms, brought them flush against one another, nuzzled his face into her hair. There was no room for sin between them, in this Garden before The Fall. As she savored his breath against her neck, she considered the intensity of this connection, so basal yet so pure, and marveled at her own capacity for it. It was a thing sublime. It was joy made perfect, to learn that such feelings were not withheld from her. That she could at last return a love in full.
The stuff of song, finally hers.