Ceasebury: Chapter Thirty-Two

I awoke with the sunlight trickling over my body. I flung open the double windows so that the white linen curtains in the room were buoyed up by the strong morning breeze and flutter like purest white butterflies around me. This was a good feeling. Yes, this was the feeling of rebirth (or at least the promise of rebirth). My mother came as she must to give me her good wishes and I was dressed by every servant in the house. I wore the biggest white lace ballgown I had ever seen. It too buoyed up much as the curtains had in the breeze. But this dress buoyed as I stepped. It hopped and leapt, like a ballerina would.

Yes, that thought was certainly of comfort.

As I was escorted into the carriage, I felt as if I were watching the scene from above. It was not me who was getting into the carriage – it was Theodosia Ceasebury. No, it was Theodosia Ravenswood. No, it was something in between. Yes, if I were to be afforded any one moment to be nameless, this was it.

And it was not golden. For I – Theodosia Antoinette Ceasebury – am not a nameless person. And it is impossible for that which has a name to be nameless. This feeling of liminality between my two lives, the few moments of pause while the reader turns the pages that divide part one and part two of the novel. That moment where you are in a place between parts, but that does not mean you are in now part at all. No. it just means you are rowing from one side of the bank to another. Gliding down the river.

This marriage was my new life. Valentine was my new life. And that was a prospect that filled me with joy.

The sun was the hottest it’d been on 13th July, 1781. The redness of the sunlight pressing through the white cloud cast its glare upon Virginia and its rolling fields and plantaions while I stayed all in white beneath the vast umbrella of the carriage. As I sped with my mother from the Ceasebury Estate towards Williamsburg, I had the distinct sense that I was moving closer by each turn of the huge wheels not only to Valentine and my new life, but also to Gabriella. Perhaps I hoped to sap some of the golden nectar she enjoys from the metaphorical fountain that seems to live in Williamsburg, like a vein of diamond running beneath the earth and cascading itself around in the little churches that dotted the landscape. Yes, Gabriella had drunk from that arbor vitae which is love, marriage and devotion and now she enjoyed a life touched by the rays of Virginian sunlight which dance upon the waters’ surface. And I was moving closer to that.

I was also (no doubt) moving closer to Valentine. He was the man who would be waiting at the end of the aisle and I would walk down to him. And I would vow to be his forever. And we would have our first state-sanctioned kiss. Tonight, I would not be returning to Ceasebury, that part of my life had reached its immaculate conclusion and I would be transformed by the incantation of love making as Theodosia Ravenswood into Valentine’s wife. Tonight, there could be a new grave in the Ceasebury Cemetery where all my epic ancestors rested as much as their souls would allow and it would say “Theodosia Ceasebury – February 12th, 1764 to July 13th 1781 – loved by Marquess Valentine Ravenswood who died too on the same day. May they be reborn in Christ.”

My potential gravestone aside, I was to be wed.

As the carriage pulled into Williamsburg, my eyes were once again drawn towards the field full of academics. They sat there as they had just a few days previously with their wigs and powder, dressed in fine clothes, reading books and writing down their meticulous thoughts. It would be lovely, I couldn’t help but allow them that. But, equally, they would never enjoy the rebirth I would. They would forever exist only upon the pages, whereas I would exist not only idealistically, but in the heart and mind of a lover. Valentine.

The carriage pulled into the church and I was helped out by the footman. The whole church had been transformed into a vision of white loveliness; ribbons trailed and hung all around and a choir of young boys (all dressed in white) were singing their sweet song out by the entrance. This was my wedding day. And Hermes was already tied up outside. Valentine was here. I was almost Marchioness Theodosia Antoinette Ravenswood.

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