“Notice the triple division of the nave,” a guide droned, going on to explain that smal er chapels lined the eastern and western aisles of the Abbey.
There was a hush over the place even though no services were going on. As Tessa let Jem lead her toward the eastern side of the church, she realized she was stepping over stones carved with dates and names. She had known that famous kings, queens, soldiers, and poets were buried in Westminster Abbey, but she hadn’t quite expected she’d be standing on top of them.
She and Jem slowed final y at the southeastern corner of the church. Watery daylight poured through the rose window overhead. “I know we are in a hurry to get to the Council meeting,” said Jem, “but I wanted you to see this.” He gestured around them. “Poets’ Corner.”
Tessa had read of the place, of course, where the great writers of England were buried. There was the gray stone tomb of Chaucer, with its canopy, and other familiar names: “Edmund Spenser, oh, and Samuel Johnson,” she gasped, “and Coleridge, and Robert Burns, and Shakespeare—”
“He isn’t real y buried here,” said Jem quickly. “It’s just a monument. Like Milton’s.”
“Oh, I know, but—” She looked at him, and felt herself flush. “I can’t explain it. It’s like being among friends, being among these names. Sil y, I know . . .”
“Not sil y at al .”
She smiled at him. “How did you know just what I’d want to see?”
“How could I not?” he said. “When I think of you, and you are not there, I see you in my mind’s eye always with a book in your hand.” He looked away from her as he said it, but not before she caught the slight flush on his cheekbones. He was so pale, he could never hide even the least blush, she thought—and was surprised how affectionate the thought was.
She had become very fond of Jem over the past fortnight; Wil had been studiously avoiding her, Charlotte and Henry were caught up in issues of Clave and Council and the running of the Institute—and even Jessamine seemed preoccupied. But Jem was always there. He seemed to take his role as her guide to London seriously. They had been to Hyde Park and Kew Gardens, the National Gal ery and the British Museum, the Tower of London and Traitors’ Gate. They had gone to see the cows being milked in St. James’s Park, and the fruit and vegetable sel ers hawking their wares in Covent Garden. They had watched the boats sailing on the sun-sparked Thames from the Embankment, and had eaten things cal ed “doorstops,” which sounded horrible but turned out to be butter, sugar, and bread. And as the days went on, Tessa felt herself unfolding slowly out of her quiet, huddled unhappiness over Nate and Wil and the loss of her old life, like a flower climbing out of frozen ground. She had even found herself laughing. And she had Jem to thank for it.
“You are a good friend,” she exclaimed. And when to her surprise he said nothing to that, she said, “At least, I hope we are good friends. You do think so too, don’t you, Jem?”
He turned to look at her, but before he could reply, a sepulchral voice spoke out of the shadows, “‘Mortality, behold and fear!
What a change of flesh is here:
Think how many royal bones
Sleep within these heaps of stones.’”
A dark shape stepped out from between two monuments. As Tessa blinked in surprise, Jem said, in a tone of resigned amusement, “Wil .
Decided to grace us with your presence after al ?”
“I never said I wasn’t coming.” Wil moved forward, and the light from the rose windows fel on him, il uminating his face. Even now, Tessa never could look at him without a tightening in her chest, a painful stutter of her heart. Black hair, blue eyes, graceful cheekbones, thick dark lashes, ful mouth—he would have been pretty if he had not been so tal and so muscular. She had run her hands over those arms. She knew what they felt like —iron, corded with hard muscles; his hands, when they cupped the back of her head, slim and flexible but rough with cal uses . . .
She tore her mind away from the memories. Memories did one no good, not when one knew the truth in the present. Wil was beautiful, but he was not hers; he was not anybody’s. Something in him was broken, and through that break spil ed a blind cruelty, a need to hurt and to push away.
“You’re late for the Council meeting,” said Jem good-naturedly. He was the only one Wil ’s puckish malice never seemed to touch.