The Alchemist's Daughter (21 page)

Aislabie, who wanted to take a look at
Flora
, said he would meet me at the Abbey in time for the funeral, if possible.

“Am I ever to see this ship?” I asked.

“One day. When she is scrubbed, polished, and watertight. You’d fuss if you saw her all exposed in her dry dock.”

“I never fuss. And I should really like to visit her. I have never seen a great expanse of water or a large ship.”

He kissed my mouth and smiled into my eyes. “Listen, Em, in May
Flora
sets sail for France on her first little voyage—just to try her out before we send her farther, pick up a few bits of cargo. How would it be if you came with me? A maiden voyage for my maiden.”

I caressed the back of his neck in the warm place I loved and ran my thumbs under his jaw as I saw myself flying under crisp white sails across a blue sea to France, and my French mother a tiny, waving figure on the opposite shore. I imagined the vastness of the sky, the creatures in the ocean, the salt of the air.

[ 4 ]

S
O
I
WAS
happy as I set out for the Abbey swathed in my new cloak. I told Sarah that once we got there she would be free until evening, and she sat pressed to a corner of the carriage, watchful as a frog on the brink of its pond. Almost before I had stepped out, she was gone.

The black ripples of my mantle and the sweep of my hat made me prominent, and I wished that Sarah had not forbidden a veil. My heart was pounding. Since babyhood, I had lived under the long shadow of Isaac Newton and the Royal Society. Now we—the Royal Society, Isaac Newton, and I—were all gathered under one roof. Only the pivot, my father, was missing.

My husband was there already, glorious in inky blue velvet and black armbands, working his way along the pews, shaking hands and making a show of boyish charm and respect. I realized suddenly that I was the only woman in sight. Surely I shouldn’t be here? But at that moment Aislabie came up, ushered me into a pew, and began pointing out the assembled dignitaries. “James Thomson, see there,” he said, nodding to a girlish-lipped, quite young man who made no acknowledgment in return. “Alexander Pope—you recognize him from last winter?” How could I forget tiny crookbacked Mr. Pope? “Monsieur Voltaire, French, exiled due to some argument over a woman I expect—you have to admire the French. John Gay, playwright, artist; Hogarth—God, look at them all.” I studied Voltaire long and hard, and indeed his nose was satisfactorily long, even longer than mine; his thin, upturned lips were unlike those of any Englishman I knew, and his eyes were dark. My husband, meanwhile, was less pleased to note the arrival of Thomas Shales, who stepped into a pew several rows in front. I shuddered when I remembered the acrimony of our last meeting, but he turned and bowed gravely as the organ struck the first vigorous chords.

The music was by a German visitor, George Frideric Handel. I feared his work and understood why my father had taught me theory and harmonics but given me no chance to play. Music tapped into a darkness that was not rational. My imagination was unleashed; I couldn’t hold it back. I no longer saw Newton’s coffin, draped in crimson like the lining of my cloak, accompanied by a procession of somber scientific gentlemen. “Sir Hans Sloane,” whispered Aislabie, nodding to the largest and most imposing of them all. “Lord Foley, Mr. Folkes, Dr. Halley . . .” Instead, I was in the church at Selden Wick, where the box pews were empty and shut fast except for the one belonging to the Gills, who stood with their backs to me, Mrs. in a dusty black shawl, Mr. bareheaded. Shales was at the top of the nave in his starched surplice, book in hand, praying over my father’s coffin. And I so wanted to be in that little church with Shales, the Gills, and my father. Just to say good-bye.

So it was not Newton I mourned, but my father. The sight of that coffin, the knowledge that the man inside would never emerge but would soon be covered by earth and stone, the howling draft that seemed to blow through my life because he wasn’t there, broke over me. And then another, keener shock that I tried with all my being to hold back, tried to duck, but it would keep coming: the lost baby, the perfect curledness of it, the packed potential of its being. All lost. And for the first time, I dared to think, Was it lost because of Aislabie, because he didn’t bother himself to be gentle with me that night?

By the end of the service, the neck of my gown was wet with tears. No wonder women are not encouraged to attend funerals, I thought, if this is what happens. I touched Aislabie’s arm and asked if we could leave quickly, but he squeezed my hand, darted out of the pew, and began to circulate, dropping a private word or two into distinguished ears. I felt a rush of despair at being abandoned among so many strangers and tried to follow him, but my tears made me inarticulate.

During the past eighteen months, my father’s education had been shown lacking in certain vital respects, and the business of crying was apparently one of them. Sobs now kicked out of my chest so violently that I had to cover them with a coughing fit, leave the pew, and hide behind a pillar. I didn’t know how to stop crying. Though I trembled and gasped and wiped away a stream of tears, there seemed to be no reaching the bottom of my grief. I hardly knew where I was or what I should do.

“Mrs. Aislabie.” I turned my head aside. Shales would surely have the sense to leave me alone. He didn’t go away, but stood beside me for a while, then said again, “Mrs. Aislabie,” and I saw that he was offering his arm. “I wonder, is this your first visit to the Abbey?”

I couldn’t speak.

“Perhaps you would allow me to be your guide.”

“I’m waiting for my husband.” I reached out my hand, as if Aislabie would come up and take it at any moment.

Shales glanced over his shoulder. “Come with me until he’s ready,” he said gently.

There was Aislabie on the far side of the Abbey, an arm flung round the shoulders of one of the pallbearers. I was still shuddering with grief, and the distance between Aislabie and me threatened to overturn me again.

“Come.” Shales tucked my hand under his arm, pressed a handkerchief between my fingers, and led me over to the portrait of a sober, flat-faced nobleman. “As far as we know, this is the first portrait ever painted of an English monarch . . .” The Abbey boomed in my ears. Again I looked for Aislabie, but he was nowhere in sight. I mopped my face with Shales’s handkerchief and was comforted by the scent of linen. He waited while I pulled my hat lower over my eyes, and then we walked on. The strangeness of his coat under my fingertips, of drifting with him, of all people, deeper into the Abbey, soothed me. The scene was mellow: ancient oak burnished by candlelight, the scent of seven-hundred-year-old stone, the swaying of banners, the murmur of educated voices. We paused frequently to acknowledge bows and nods, and he introduced me as “Mrs. Aislabie. Sir John Selden’s daughter.” I kept my tearstained face averted, but I heard their respectful comments: “Delighted . . .” “Your father . . . luminous mind” . . . “great privilege . . .”

And then we left them all behind, until they were a distant echo. Shales, presumably well practiced in the art of soothing distressed females, kept up a steady flow of conversation: “I suspect that though Sir Isaac would have been pleased by the numbers here, he would also have been scornful of the fact that some who picked quarrels with him or took no interest in his work while he was alive should wish to be seen at his funeral.”

A rush of air heaved up from my chest in a shuddering sigh and shook me from head to toe. I made a mental note to study the anatomy of tears so as to be prepared next time. Shales led me to the tomb of Edmund, Duke of Lancaster, and I moved about on the ancient paving stones, breathing deeply and thinking, This is all very well, but what if Shales knew what I was up to in the laboratory at Selden? What if he knew that I was experimenting with palingenesis? Under the circumstances, it seemed deceitful to allow him to be so kind to me.

At last I recovered enough to speak: “Where do you think Isaac Newton is now?”

He smiled. “If you’d asked him that question, he would probably have said, ‘In one of God’s many mansions.’ He was a great one for believing in heaven for the blessed—a giant laboratory, probably, where God could share the secrets of his creation with those few mortals with wit enough to understand.”

“What do you think?”

“I have no idea what heaven contains. I like to think there is a place of rest, particularly for those who have suffered too much on earth.”

“Did my father suffer?”

“He was very ill, Mrs. Aislabie. It was terrible to see him struggle for breath. But he was fighting a great many demons, I think, that tortured him more. For instance, I didn’t understand at the time how much he must have fought his longing to see you.”

This was nearly an apology. Perhaps it would do. Perhaps I should forgive him. In return, I tried to repair some of the damage I had done in the church porch. “Did your wife suffer much?”

“She did. Too much.”

“How did she die?”

“Of smallpox.”

“How long ago was that?”

“Nearly three years.”

“She wasn’t inoculated, then?”

“No.”

“But I thought you met my father during the experiment in which convicts were engrafted against the smallpox.”

“Nevertheless. When I said the household should be inoculated, she refused.”

“But why?”

“She was afraid.”

I stared up at him. I was about to say, ‘Surely you should have persuaded her,’ but the look in his eye was so remote that I didn’t dare. I said, “At least you can pray for her. I wasn’t taught how to pray.”

He said nothing.

“Do you mind telling me what you pray?”

“I pray for the wisdom to find meaning in the . . . her death.”

“And have you?”

“No, Mrs. Aislabie, I find no meaning. But perhaps that’s because I’m too small to see a plan so large I rarely get anything but a brief glimpse of it.”

“Should I pray for my father’s soul, do you think?”

He laughed. “Not if you don’t believe in such a thing.”

“So how should I pray for him?”

“Are you asking my advice as a clergyman?”

“Yes. As a clergyman. That’s your profession, after all. Why are you surprised?”

“I wouldn’t dare advise you about anything.”

“Please.”

“Mrs. Aislabie, I’m sure you pray for him night and day just by keeping him in mind.”

“And if I don’t pray. If I am neglectful, do you think I will be punished?”

“By what? By whom?”

“Do you think I might be struck a blow because I have done wrong?”

He was silent a long time. “What kind of blow?”

“I lost . . . I cannot help thinking . . . I married Aislabie, and then I lost . . .”

“You lost your baby, Mrs. Aislabie. Is that what you mean?” Another long pause. “No. I don’t think it is a matter of punishment. I think it’s a matter of recognizing how frail we all are.”

“I feel punished.”

“No. No. I do not believe in a mechanism for punishment and reward.”

“So your prayer is not entreaty.”

“For what? For favors? For an assured place in heaven? I have tried all kinds of asking and am never satisfied. What I do know is that the expectation of heaven can be no substitute for what happens here. It can’t be an excuse for inflicting misery on others. But sometimes I can’t help hoping that heaven will contain a few shocks for those of us who are complacent or cruel.”

“What shock will be prepared for you?”

“Perhaps a series of meetings with Mrs. Aislabie will be arranged, to ensure I am never complacent for long.” I looked up and was caught off guard by his smile and then a sudden change, an expression in his eye that was intense and unnerving. We walked on in silence, my hand still resting on his arm, but now I was self-conscious, aware of the occasional pressure when his leg brushed my skirt. Once I glanced up at him, but he was looking away. Then I saw that we had returned to the nave and that the crowd had dispersed. My husband was standing fretfully by the door, and I felt a stab of anxiety.

Before we reached him, Shales took the crumpled handkerchief from me and put it in his pocket. He said, “I remember that when you came to visit me in my study, you asked what I intended to do with the air I had collected by fermenting those peas. Ever since, I have been wondering what was behind that question. I have struggled with my plants, with small-scale measurements and observations, but until I spoke to you it never occurred to me to go a step further with regard to the airs I had collected. It seems to me that I have been taking a very narrow view. Do you think you would have time to give me a lesson or two, Mrs. Aislabie, or direct my reading?”

I was flattered and amazed, but there was no time to answer. My husband sprang forward, and my hand transferred itself from one arm, black worsted, to another, blue velvet. Aislabie bowed low to Shales. “I gather you’ve called at the house a couple of times. We must arrange a meeting.”

“I was wondering if you have any comments on the petition we handed to you,” said Shales. His voice was clipped, and for the first time I saw he could be formidable.

“Can’t say I remember it.”

“You should take note. The mood is ugly. My parishioners have heard all kinds of rumors—they can’t sleep peacefully in their beds for fear of losing the roof over their heads.”

“Nonsense.”

“And then there’s the matter of money. They pay their rents and see no return. The land is in a poor state. Wages have not been paid.”

“Not everyone pays rents. I’ve been looking at the books.”

“Nonetheless . . .”

“Nonetheless. We are all having to pay for decades of neglect and mismanagement, despite your commendable efforts with fertilizing the soil. It will take years of careful husbandry to restore the estates. I am not a magician, Shales, unlike my predecessor.”

“People are very unhappy.”

The roguish dimple played in Aislabie’s cheek. “I hope this isn’t a threat, Shales.”

“I’m no threat. It’s your choice. But if you don’t consult with them, they will rebel.”