The Alchemist's Daughter (17 page)

I watched him go, amazed. It could not be true that Selden and its terraces, its bee orchard, library, laboratory and ancient rooms, could simply be dismantled. Harford’s elbow was held out ready, so I took his arm and walked with him to the lower lawn. He moved with exaggerated care, as if I might shatter if he hurried. We made our stately way across the sodden grass and came to the edge of the wood, where Mr. Harford pointed to his brass-buckled shoes. “Here will be the lake, and here, just about where this hawthorn is, the bridge. From where your husband is standing, Mrs. Aislabie, there will be a perfect view of temple, bridge, and even a small island.”

I thought my husband had gone inside long ago, but there he was, his apricot breeches and white sleeves luminous against the dark walls. Then he waved and disappeared.

Mr. Harford backed away, gesturing excitedly. He had reached the edge of the wood and entered the trees, so that his neckcloth and the fall of lace at his wrists shone eerily in the gloom. “The temple,” he said, “will be about here. And behind it a knoll, a few trees, spring flowers. The perfect summerhouse for the ladies—for all sorts of assignations.” He smiled suggestively.

I moved away, peering up at the manor house through a web of trunks and branches. It sat snug to the side of the valley with its chimneys stacked randomly against a fading sky. I imagined a white mansion floating above me, our impossible terraces smoothed into an expanse of lawn, a glassy lake.

Mr. Harford had followed me. “These thrilling plans are mostly the work of your husband. He has seized the opportunity of having the river so near. Such inspiration. I have simply worked out the mechanics and put it all on paper.”

“You and Mr. Osborne have done wonders,” I said, sweeping away up the steps to the house, “considering you have had so little time.”

Harford panted behind me. “Certainly, we have not been idle, although we came prepared—we had been given a sketch of what was required. And as I say, your husband . . . so clear about what he wanted. Do you remember there is a painting in your London residence, a landscape by Lorrain, an idyll of woods, sloping fields, water, and human habitation in the classic style? When we saw the lie of the land, the position of the existing house, it all fell into place. I have rarely met a layman with such talent. He will create a French landscape peopled by Englishmen.”

I had reached the parapet, where the garden design was still spread out, so I was able to trace an avenue of trees stretching from the north of the house to a pair of gates. “The village of Selden Wick is not marked,” I said.

“Ah.” Mr. Harford scooped his weights into his fist, rolled up the parchment with a flourish, and tucked it under his arm. “The village, my dear Mrs. Aislabie, will have to go.”

“Go where?”

“Out of sight,” said Mr. Harford. “It’s all to do with vistas. I am known for my vistas, Mrs. Aislabie. My first aim is to please the eye. When you stand at the window of your new house or take tea in the little temple or stroll across the bridge, you will be delighted by ever-changing but ever-harmonious vistas. No untidy little cottages, no intrusion from the village children.”

“Where will they all go?”

“Your husband has mentioned another village on the estate that might be expanded. Or he’s talked of designing a model village. Your husband, Mrs. Aislabie, has the mental energy of a truly great man. He sees problems as opportunities. A model village. Just think. Model cottages built to modern specifications. Perfect. Don’t worry, Mrs. Aislabie. Where there is money, there is always a solution.” He looked keenly into my face, a hint of a question in his voice. Money. Now there was the rub.

“And what of the church?” I asked, thinking of Shales. Perhaps some premonition had made him choose to live in the cottage at Lower Selden rather than the doomed rectory at Selden Wick.

“Churches can be a problem,” admitted Mr. Harford. “There are laws about churches. But this one has an attractive spire. We will plant an arbor and make it a charming feature of our landscape.”

“But how will people come to church if the park gates are kept shut?”

“I expect they can be allowed to enter the park on Sundays,” he said, “provided they remember to wipe their boots.”

[ 9 ]

W
HEN
H
ARFORD HAD
gone into the house, I watched silver clouds close over a marble moon. Behind me, the kitchen window was lit by tallow candles, and a less smoky light shone from the library and a few lattices on the first floor. I reeled under the fast-moving sky. How had this sudden and extraordinary turn of events come about? Aislabie had married me. Selden belonged to me. I was Selden. Who had given him permission to rip it open and start again?

I had been taught to look for cause and effect. Well, Aislabie had made love to me under the apple tree, and now Selden was to be pulled down and a new house built instead. What was the formula that linked these events? I thought it was me, Emilie, but I seemed to have been left out of all the calculations. If only my father would come and give me the answer or show me the right book.

The clouds sped away, the moon showed half its face, and the winter trees sighed. I reached with my fingertips and felt the white light ripple on my skin. The terraces beneath me were black as water, and an owl undulated overhead.

There was no room for an owl in Harford’s design. He had given me a niche in the shade of the temple with my mythical lady friends poised on the banks of the nonexistent lake, and Aislabie’s place was under the dome, but what about the owl? I saw her again, swooping lower and lower. Some poor creature in the undergrowth must be trying to make itself invisible to those extraordinary eyes.

Cause and effect. I was the cause, this the effect; but what was the chemical reaction in the middle? It was a puzzle harder than all the rest. Please, please, please, Father. Tell me. What did I do that was so wrong? In the past, you forgave me everything in the end. I only loved Aislabie. I only loved him first and married him second. Was that all it took to make this happen?

No answer. Not a word. No encouraging prod with the staff or instruction to go look it up, Emilie, plunder the writings of Agricola, Paracelsus, or Mayow for answers. Only the soft hooting of the owl. So I thought again. I love Aislabie. I owe him a great deal; knowledge of my body and his, the child . . . the child that came floating to the surface of my mind more and more often these days, despite my efforts to keep the memory down. I couldn’t stop myself from thinking, If only the baby had lived, and I had brought it home last summer when my father was still alive. Surely he would have forgiven me, and I would have been allowed to look after him, and he would not have died.

But at Selden, we never indulged in speculation. A hypothesis had value only if it could be used as a basis for experiment. No experiment that I knew would bring back either the baby or my father.

The moon came fully out. Newton had put that old moon firmly in its place; likewise the earth and the other planets. He had found guiding laws for them all. And the wonder was so much was happening at the same time. I used to believe that there was only the laboratory, and everything else existed so that Emilie and her father could find an explanation for it. Now I was shrunk to almost nothing by the knowledge that in some stylish London address Newton was coughing himself to death while the earth turned, my father lay in his coffin, Aislabie planned, Sarah sewed, and Shales measured his plants.

How small I was. How irrelevant to all these activities.

A small night creature had been caught in its scurry between one sheltering leaf and another. The owl was as delicate in her operations as my father when he dissected a rat. She drew out the creature’s entrails in a translucent slide of mucus and tissue. I knew how it felt to be torn open like that.

[ 10 ]

S
ARAH HAD BUILT
such a huge fire in my bedchamber that I thought I would faint. She laced me first into the black-and-white petticoat she’d embroidered for me, then an overskirt of white alamode so gauzy that it floated in the heat. That overskirt was my favorite. My mother, I thought, would have recognized its slight sheen and whisper on the skin.

Sarah breathed heavily as she rubbed color into my cheeks. “You are very pale, madam. Perhaps just a hint of red on your lips?”

“No. Thank you.”

“Mr. Aislabie’s waiting for you in the library.” She could never speak gently—there was always a layer of aggression in her tone—but as she took strands of hair and wound them in a knot, her knuckles brushed my cheeks, and she watched her own hands in the mirror until the touch of her skin on mine was almost a caress. I had never known her this distracted. And she smelled different. Her sweet scent masked a change. I looked at her face in the glass and saw that she was biting her lip and her brows were drawn tight together.

“Stand up then, madam.” Aislabie had brought a mirror from London at Sarah’s request, and now I could see my reflection much more clearly than ever before at Selden. Yet that night I seemed a ghostly figure in my white gown. Sarah put her arms round my waist and lifted the overskirt so that it puffed up and fell airily back.

“What do you think?” I had never asked this question before, and she looked at me with a sudden flash of interest, then studied me with great seriousness in the mirror. Her head was just higher than my shoulder, and she was rosy in the firelight. “I think it will please him,” she said, which I took to be approval.

My white skirts floated up and brushed my elbows as I went downstairs. I skimmed the banister with my thumb, held my body upright, and thought that all would be well. I had only to explain my point of view to Aislabie and he would change his mind. I was full of hope as I crossed the entrance hall, the fabric of my skirts flying, my ancestors hidden by the dark.

The library door was wide open and the room lit by a dozen candles, so corners that had always been shadowed were now shockingly displayed. The plans for the house and gardens were laid out in a glaring display of new parchment on my father’s supper table. Aislabie was pulling books off the shelves and piling them on the floor, sending little clouds of dust into the air. He bounded across and kissed my hands. “Now, my scholar, you must guide me. Three piles. One to keep. One to sell. One to burn.”

The room smelled of dust and ink and parchment, and I saw not only the living flames in the hearth and the bright colors of Aislabie but the old library where Emilie had knelt beside her father to fill his pipe, scraped her nail on the rough bowl, and sniffed the scorched wood on her fingers.

I held tight to my husband’s warm hands. “Burn?”

“We have to start somewhere. This library has too many books. The library in the new house will be much smaller, and of course I have books to display—poetry, plays, novels, essays—not to mention my collection of porcelain. There’ll be no room for all these.”

“You can’t burn our books.” But my voice was insubstantial because I was back inside the nightmare of violent, unthinkable change.

“Well, will they all sell, do you think? What price will they fetch? Maybe we should give them away.” Even at his most tender there was always a hint of amusement, and this gleam made him bigger and me smaller, as if he was constantly seeing jokes I was too ignorant to understand.

“You know I couldn’t bear to have these books sold.”

“No choice, Em. We have to be practical. Look at the plans.”

“I should like that. I should very much like to look at the plans with you.”

“Of course. What would you like to know?”

“I should like to know why I wasn’t consulted about the rebuilding of my own house.”

“You are being consulted. I thought we’d start by seeing what’s possible, then you can say whether you like it or not.”

“There are parts of this house that must be kept as they are. The laboratory, the library and the gardens have been stocked by generations of Seldens. And my mother’s room in the old wing is all that I have of her.”

He dotted kisses on my temples and cheekbone. “Now these, my dear old Em, my alchemical little wife, are the very parts of the house that are the most tumbledown and outdated.”

“Why do you insist on calling me alchemical? I was brought up to be a natural philosopher, a mathematician. My father was an expert on the nature of fire. Don’t dismiss my education as if it didn’t matter. It does. If you destroy the laboratory and all my books, what will be left?”

“You’ll be left, my dearest girl, and all that you are. When we have children of our own, I hope they’ll have Selden brains and Aislabie daring. What a combination, eh?” His little-boy longing was disarming. “Fact is, we’ll be a laughingstock if we don’t rebuild this house. I’m told Selden used to be one of the most prominent manors in Buckinghamshire, and I want it to be that again. Our houses are backdrops to what we are, and I’m known for seizing every fresh opportunity, adapting to each new circumstance. I can’t be seen in a house that’s merely a dull relic of the past. We’ll fill the lake with fish, the woods with pheasants, the stables with hunters. Selden will be crammed with all manner of good things, and you’re one of them, Em. Imagine smooth walls hung with exquisite landscapes, cabinets full of antiquities brought by
Flora
from far-flung continents, music, dancing on marble floors. Isn’t that what you want?”

What did I want? I wanted him to love me. I wanted my father. I wanted Selden to stay the same, and I wanted my child to have lived. “I want to make up my own mind about these changes,” I said. But I’d never made a proper decision in my life. I hadn’t been trained to choose.

Aislabie was delighted by this reply. His cheek dimpled, and he squeezed my arm. “Of course. You can have whatever you like, so long as you choose to look forward, not back. Your father was a great man, but he had his feet in the past. I’m not wasting my time there, and neither should you.”

“Then nothing is certain?” I said. “It’s not too late to keep some things as they are.”