Taking Wing

The Limitless Sky

Isabel wakes before the rest of the household stirs, roused by the familiar din of cart wheels and hooves rattling over the cobbles below her window. The first rays of light catch in her eyelashes. She lies still for a moment, aware of a restlessness she cannot quite name.

Isabel sleeps little these days and hardly has a moment to herself. Yet she is rarely tired; if anything, she feels as though she is glowing with health. She has noticed the same strange lightness in other plague survivors all over the city. It is as if brushing so closely against death left every one of them determined never again to squander a single precious hour on earth.

Isabel dresses quickly, feeling an irresistible pull to get outdoors. She slips downstairs and out into the pearly early light before anyone else in the house is awake.

Order is slowly returning to the household. Father has hired a new cook and a new maid. The gardener is due back later that day to prune and tidy the flowerbeds and hedges that have grown shaggy with neglect through the long weeks of quarantine.

Ordinarily the garden is kept as neat and formal as Aunt Elinor’s embroidery. But this year it has taken on an unruly fruitfulness all its own, mushrooms and brambles heavy with blackberries sprouting freely through the untamed grass. Wandering among them, Isabel is reminded, wistfully, of the wild beauty of Aunt de Vere’s countryside estate. She finds herself wondering whether Cole has ever flown Nicolette without her since she left, and whether the little merlin chose to come back to him afterward, or flew on and on, forever, into the limitless sky.

Isabel’s breath catches in her throat. Beside her, a waterfall of silky crimson roses, Mother’s favorite flowers, has tumbled into bloom. The bush usually flowers only once, in early summer. So this second flush, so late in the year, feels to Isabel like a small miracle.

Isabel begins picking the blossoms impulsively, carefully snapping the thorny stems, breathing in their sweetness with every breath and thinking, over and over, that she is alive, she is alive. She cannot help feeling glad, even knowing how many others perished this past year, so many that their names will never be written down anywhere on earth, only in the book of heaven.

Once Isabel’s arms are full of flowers, she carries them inside. She lays half of them down in the scullery and carries the rest up to the schoolroom, in memory of poor Master Hart. He perished so cruelly of plague along with his entire family. While tidying the schoolroom earlier, she had come across his old notebook, which had gotten mixed in among the lesson books and put away on the shelves along with them.

Isabel sets the vivid blooms upon the hearthstone and lays the notebook, full of his unfinished poems and plays, beside them. She remembers how happy her tutor used to be, warming himself beside Meg’s little fire. She wants to believe he is looking down at her now from paradise. She also wants him to know, somehow, that she will always remember his kindness.

It is then that Father speaks from the doorway, announcing that he has come to a decision. His voice sounds so strange that Isabel, alarmed, asks nervously what he means, whether she has displeased him somehow. Displeased him, he echoes, incredulous, as though the very idea is absurd. How could she possibly have displeased him?

Baby Hope is now in good health, Aunt Elinor has recovered hers, and the household is running smoothly again. He says it is obvious to him that Isabel has profited enormously from Aunt de Vere’s guidance. So he wants her to go back to Northamptonshire to finish her education there.

Father speaks in the same brusque voice he always uses, but Isabel can see he is close to tears. He promises this is no banishment. He and Aunt Elinor will bring baby Hope to visit whenever they possibly can, and Sabine, too.

Reluctant to see her go, Father admits he would rather keep her close, but he knows it would be wrong to hold her back. He says Aunt de Vere is a wise woman. Dropping his voice as though in awe, he tells her that male apothecaries write to her aunt asking for her advice.

Isabel’s heart begins to beat in her throat. Had she heard him right? Was it truly possible that her own father was setting her free to live as she chose? She must look so thoroughly astonished that he mistakes her expression for the start of laughter. He asks, half-suspicious, whether she is being impertinent with him.

Then Father breaks into laughter himself and folds her into his arms, still laughing. She breathes in his dear, familiar scent of nutmeg and cinnamon as his voice catches with the effort of composing himself. He confesses he should never have sent her away in the first place. Yet that very decision, impossibly, is what brought her home again in time to save them all. He says Mother would have been so proud of her, and so is he.

Releasing her from the embrace, Father invites her to come break her fast with him. Soon he will have to do without her impertinent company again for a good while. Isabel tells him she will join him shortly; first, there is something she needs to do.

Isabel pulls on her cloak and carries what remains of the roses down to the river Thames. For a few moments she simply stands at the water’s edge, watching the boats and barges ply back and forth. She listens to a ferryman calling out “Westward ho” to his passengers, and to the plaintive cry of gulls wheeling overhead.

Then Isabel tosses the flowers into the water one by one. They go drifting slowly downstream, jewel-bright against the filthy current. Watching them go, she finds herself remembering the night she and Meg once stood in this same spot. They watched a magical barge float past them through the dusk.

Isabel had still been a child then, full of wild and foolish dreams. Yet impossibly, some of those dreams are coming true now. She fingers Meg’s lucky charm at her throat and smiles, whispering to her that she is free at last, as free as a merlin in the sky.