Chapter 15
The opening of Hamlet was a triumph!
The small school’s theater was packed to the brim with all sorts of people, from the highest of the Briarwood family to the lowest of the people who lived on the streets of the East End.
Everyone sat shoulder to shoulder, equal for once, in a setting where they could watch a play that was hundreds of years old.
And the children were so capable at storytelling that there was no danger of anyone being left behind in a language that was spoken in a way that was somewhat unfamiliar to a contemporary ear or in a verse that was unfathomable.
No, it did not matter if one was a Briarwood who had been raised reading Shakespeare from the cradle, or one who had been born almost in the gutter. Everyone here appreciated the children’s work.
Celia sat beside her soon-to-be husband and felt such pride and success, and he felt such pride and triumph in her too. She could feel it, deep in her bones, and it warmed her.
So, when the final moment occurred and Fortinbras came on stage and made his declaration, the entire crowd watching the stage surged with applause and cheered. That harrowing end, that cautionary tale resonated.
She turned to her soon-to-be husband. Dominic pulled her into his arms, kissed her without any sort of apology or embarrassment before the crowd, and declared, “What a wonder you are. What a woman to be admired!”
She laughed, basking in his pride and celebration. Still, she needed to correct him as she leaned into his embrace. “It is not me. It is all of them.”
“But it is also you, my dearest,” he insisted. “You have made this happen. I have seen how you are with the children.”
“And me?” Emilia teased as she all but bounced up to them, clearly delighted by how the evening had gone.
“And you,” he announced as they stood near the stage.
Dominic gazed over the bustling crowd who were now milling about, speaking with great enthusiasm as the actors went through the audience, accepting accolades.
“Oh!” Emilia exclaimed. “Did you hear grandmama has invited the American actor Ira Aldridge to dinner this week?”
“How wonderful!” Celia crowed. She had met him a few times at various theatrical functions.
He was an excellent actor who had recently left the United States, hoping for more opportunities as a Black actor in London.
His reception by many was enthusiastic. There were certain, reprehensible naysayers.
Her grandmother hoped to help silence those toads.
Dominic beamed at this news. “I am eager to make his acquaintance. Now I must go congratulate Hamlet and Ophelia,” he said, clapping his hands together, but first he bowed. “Well done, ladies.”
He left her side and headed straight to several of the children and their parents. And she noticed that he spent a particular amount of time with the young man who played Hamlet, Michael Baker, and his mother, being very gentle with her.
Tears filled her eyes. “He’s so good.”
Emilia nodded. “He really is. His level of empathy is quite surprising. I don’t think he understands how empathetic he is.”
“I think that’s because if he understands it,” she said warily, “then he’ll understand that he cares even when he says that he does not.”
Emilia rolled her eyes. “Men can be so incredibly silly, can’t they?”
“Sometimes,” she replied.
“You’re happy,” Emilia said quickly.
“I am.” Celia studied her sister’s face. “And you truly don’t mind?”
Emilia tsked, her bright eyes dancing. “How could I possibly mind my sister’s happiness? Perhaps you’ve just inspired me to find my own sort of happiness.”
“Are you going to get married?” Celia asked, shocked.
Emilia’s eyes bulged. “I hope not.” She laughed. “Men are so much work. I enjoy them, but I’ve seen the way you’ve already had to toil while helping that one, and he’s one of the best men. My goodness. I don’t know why you decided it’s worth it.”
Celia grinned. “Well, I could tell you, but certainly not here.”
Emilia grinned. “That shocking, is it?”
“No, not a bit of it.” She dimmed her merriment a bit and said with real consideration, “Quite honestly, the things that make him wonderful are not shocking at all. And I can’t even understand what’s compelled me to be by his side.
It’s a force much stronger than my mind. And one day you might feel it too.”
Emilia coughed. “God save me from forces stronger than my mind, for my mind is my very favorite thing about me.” Emilia paused, took her hands, then said most seriously, “All I want is that you are happy.”
She nodded. “I am. I am so happy that I’m stunned by it. I really thought I was going to have to get rid of him, you know. Find some way to assure him, then send him off like an unwanted admirer. It turns out that I have gotten quite used to him and would not have him leave me for anything.”
Dominic glanced back over his shoulder at that moment and their eyes met. He was so proud of her work. It radiated from him. But more than anything, he was proud of the children in the school, and he was kind to all of them. He took time with each of them.
Even though his evenings and much of his day was full of grand lords and the work that drove him, convincing the most powerful and wealthy people in the world that slavery wasn’t justifiable in any way, he took time to be here in this part of town.
He had helped her show each child that they were important, that they were worthwhile, that their dreams could lift them out of the mire and change things.
Because that was what she truly believed. That each child saved, each child taught that they were worthwhile and worthy, was a balm for this world.
She lifted her hand to her mouth and coughed for a moment.
“You all right?” Emilia asked.
“Yes, just a tickle in my lungs.” She sucked in another breath and found herself quite short of it. “There must be too much smoke in this room,” she said. “If I had to wager, I’m about to have an after-show illness.”
Emilia groaned. “Oh no! Your infamous collapse of exhaustion.”
They laughed together, which only caused her to cough again.
“Oh, my dear, you must rest,” Emilia said soothingly. “You’re tired out from all the work.”
Celia nodded. It was true. Emilia had gotten ill at the beginning of the rehearsal process. And while neither of them ever got seriously sick, Celia often came down with a small illness once the play had its opening. It was her body forcing her to rest.
“There’s so much pressure to make certain that the children do a good job and that they feel proud of themselves,” Celia said.
Emilia squeezed her hand. “Go home, get sick, then get ready for the next one.”
Celia winked. “Of course. What would life be without this?”
She was bone-weary, but running on the excitement of the night.
There was always a cough going about. Half the children in Hamlet had the sniffles.
She pinned a smile to her lips and went and spoke to every parent and every child because she knew how important this night was.
And how important it was to her too, because it would sustain her through the very hard days when children left or children died or she realized that there were some children she could only help with their hearts.
Dominic sat straight up in bed and glanced down at the woman who shared the bed with him. She was sweating profusely and rolling about in the bed, coughing.
“Celia?” he ventured. “Are you all right?”
She did not seem to hear him. She was shivering.
“Celia,” he said, grabbing her.
Terror sluiced through him. She was unwell, desperately unwell. And he thought of the cough that she had been experiencing as they had rolled home from the theater.
She was sucking in ragged breaths as if she could not get in air.
A vision of his mother and her last days came to him. Her pale face, her shallow breath…and the coughing.
He turned to the side table and quickly lit a candle.
Celia was breathing raggedly, her ribcage sucking inward under her night rail. Cold fear splashed through him. He vaulted from the bed, ran to the fireplace, and pulled the bell pull beneath it. He whipped on a robe and crossed back to Celia and sat beside her.
“Wake up,” he called.
“Dominic, go back to sleep,” she said.
“You’re unwell,” he insisted.
Her eyes remained closed, darting under her lids. “It will pass. It’s nothing.”
It wasn’t nothing. He was certain. She’d spent too much time in the East End, where dire illness passed every day. Just this week, there had been word of an outbreak that had killed several people.
He grabbed the small jug of water on his nightstand and poured out a glass of water.
He tried to sit her up and force it to her lips.
“Blazes, Dominic,” she murmured. “I’m fine and just want to sleep.”
“You’re hot,” he said, feeling his heart begin to beat so intensely he feared it might thunder out of his chest. A cold sweat broke out over him, and suddenly the room felt like it was swaying.
What if she had caught what had killed those people? What if she was ill like his mother?
The thoughts wouldn’t stop racing, one on top of the other, until he was rigid with terror.
He tried to make her drink again. And she scowled at him, finding him most irritating as she drank. But she coughed and water splashed all over them.
“I am not a plant, Dominic,” she muttered. “I do not need to be watered.”
Her pert reply did not cut through his terror, for all he could hear was her cough, and all he could feel was the heat from her body.
He raced to the bell pull beside the fire and tugged it again. After only a few minutes, a servant came to the door.
The moment the young maid appeared, Dominic warned, “Stay back. She is unwell. Have a doctor sent for immediately.”
The girl nodded and ran.
Minutes later, there was a banging at the door.
Lord Hector and Lady Priscilla, Celia’s mother and father, darted into the room. He felt a moment of apprehension. After all, he and their daughter were not married.
But they did not care.
“What is wrong with her?” Lady Priscilla demanded as she approached the bed.
“She seems to be terribly unwell,” he said.
“Nonsense,” Celia croaked. “I just need a bit of sleep.”
“She’s coughing terribly,” he insisted.
Lord Hector looked from his daughter to Dominic, a strange emotion crossing his face.
He did not seem afraid.
But that did not soothe Dominic. If anything, it terrified him more that they were not taking her illness seriously.
Lady Priscilla took her daughter’s hand and smiled gently. “You’ve overdone it again, haven’t you?”
Celia scowled, propped herself up on the wet pillows, and nodded.
“Perhaps trying to be the toast of the ton and run a school is a bit much,” Lady Priscilla said.
Those words crashed over him. His fault. This was his fault. She was helping him and now she was seriously ill.
“Don’t be absurd, Mama,” Celia returned in between coughs. “I am extremely capable. I just a need a day or two in bed. Ridiculous, frail body.”
“You?” Lord Hector said, smiling. “Frail? You’d make Zeus look like an old man.”
What the bloody hell was wrong with these people? Could they not hear her cough? See her sweating?
Well, if they would not act, he would.
A doctor was coming, but more was needed. So he went to the door, looked back over his shoulder, and the fear that washed over him was so intense, so awful, that he wanted to vomit.
How could her parents not see? He was shaking with fear for her, and they? They were acting as if this was nothing.
He loved her.
Dear God, he loved her with everything that he had. He raced out into the hall, down the backstairs, towards the kitchen. It was already almost dawn and so the tweenie was at work lighting the fires.
He stayed back as far as he could, in case he was infectious.
“We need hot water,” he said swiftly. “And broth. Please tell the cook that she must make broth today.”
Her eyes widened in her pale face, her mob cap bouncing. She nodded. “Yes, Your Grace. Is Miss Celia sick? She’s always sick after a long rehearsal period. Just a few hours. Then she’s right as rain.”
He swallowed, his mind racing. Perhaps she was right as rain in the past, but her fever was too hot. Her cough… Too much like the one he’d heard when his mother was ill. And so many people had been sick in the East End lately. What a fool he’d been to let her go so blithely!
Ignoring the tweenie’s calm, he added, “And have any of the medicines the dowager duchess keeps for fever brought up.”
The tweenie gaped at him as if he had lost his wits, but she replied dutifully, “Of course, Your Grace. Of course.”
“But tell everyone they must stay away from Miss Celia’s room.”
And then he thought of Emilia.
How was he going to tell her that her dearest sister was terribly, terribly ill?
Slowly, he began to make his way back up the stairs, but then he stopped and leaned against the wall. What if she was taken from him? What if… Dear God, he had been encouraging her to go to the East End.
He had been celebrating the triumph of her play, but that was where she had become sick. That was what had made her ill. And he should have known better.
This idea that she could go to a place where illness lurked at every corner, where death was not a friend, but a constant companion? He knew how dangerous the combination of poverty and people living closely together was.
What a fool he was. What a gamble the whole family took every day. How could they do it? How could he do it?
And in that moment, he knew he had gone too far.
He had slid into caring too much. And suddenly he knew that he was just like his father.
All the things that he had promised himself he would fight? He’d failed. She was the center of his life now, and he couldn’t lose her, not for anything.
And when she woke, he would have to tell her that.
But what if she didn’t get better?
She would. She had to and when she did, he would make it utterly clear. There would be no chancing her survival, not for anything, not for anyone, because he could not bear it. He would not chance losing her. Nothing was worth her loss, not a dream, not a fight, not anything.