The Alchemist's Daughter (25 page)

As I hadn’t kept my own legs together when it mattered, I studied the speaker with some interest. She was Lady E.’s mother, a stately matron who’d given a disdainful nod to the red theme by tying a red ribbon to her fan.

“Could you have put a pillow over your own child’s face?” I said.

“What a question.”

“So you chose life for your children?”

“Naturally.” Her eyes were the color of iron.

“Naturally. I don’t think any mother would kill her infant, unless the alternative was worse.”

Her fan worked so furiously that her cap strings blew over her shoulder. “I’m sure. But my point is that they should not; the child ought not be conceived in the first place. Every woman has a choice.”

I disappeared for a while into the bee orchard to consider whether I’d been given a choice, and by the time I came back to the scarlet present the conversation had moved on to the disgracefully high charges made by certain midwives. I had to speak loudly to pull them back into line. “I think that human beings are very odd. In any other species, a mother, having copulated, is properly equipped to nurture her young until they can survive alone. The human species expects the woman to be respectable, married, and moneyed before she can manage motherhood.”

There was a gulping behind the fans, and Lady E., blushing in her pink satin, said, “That’s because we’re higher than animals. Heaven forbid that we should all behave like beasts.” She stroked the head of her big-eyed slave child, who stared unblinkingly into some distant place. All that leaning forward revealed Lady E.’s entire bosom, and she glanced under her eyelids across the room at Aislabie, who narrowed his eyes in appreciation. “Animals work by instinct. We humans have emotion and intellect. If we are Christian, we know good from evil. We choose how to behave.”

Bewildered by the unexpected display of intimacy between Lady E. and my husband, I spoke much too sharply. “Ah, choice—but how do we know who or what to choose? And a girl doesn’t have much choice if some man chooses to push her onto her back and pump her full of his seed.”

I don’t know how they reacted to this last remark, because the room had changed. There was a black pillar among the crimson: Shales, of all people. I stood up and peered over the crowd to be sure it was him, but there was no mistaking his trim wig and sober face, although just at the moment there was a distinct gleam in his eye.

I fought my way over to him. “Why are you here?”

He kissed my hand like a London gentleman, and the unexpected contact of his lips made me flinch. I thought I knew where I was with Shales, who smiled only when he was glad and never spoke untruths. “I was invited, and I’m pleased I accepted, because I couldn’t help overhearing some of your conversation. You have been giving your lady friends quite an education.”

“Did you really get an invitation? My husband said I wasn’t to speak to you.”

“He and I have our differences, obviously, but of course he’d invite me. How could he not?”

“I’m amazed you would bother with a party like this.”

“I quite like parties. I used to go to a good many at one time. But I came because I wanted to see you. You haven’t been in church, and when I called at the house they said you were unavailable.”

“Who said?”

“Once your husband. A second time your maid.”

“I wasn’t told. What did you want to say to me?”

“I wanted to show you the second edition of my book, which is nearly ready for the printers. I thought you might be just the person to check it for inconsistencies. And I was hoping to add a chapter on investigations into the air exhaled by plants, but I need a bold mind to guide me.”

I wouldn’t meet his eye in case he found out that instead of furthering my work on fire and air, I had been spending week after week watching the distillation of my alchemical mixture. “As I’ve said, my husband distrusts you. I couldn’t have spoken to you even if I’d wanted to.”

“But you’ve been working, obviously. Both times I called, they said you weren’t to be disturbed. May I ask what you’ve been doing?”

“The house has been full of upheaval. I’ve had no time for experiments.”

“A pity. I was sure that by now you would have come close to confounding the phlogistonists.”

I was silent. On the one hand, he irritated me with his questions about phlogiston; on the other, I wished he would offer his arm and take me somewhere cool and quiet, like in the Abbey, so that I could tell him all that had happened on the day of the dead babies.

“So, the house,” he said. “I gather the plans are going forward. You must be very sad.”

“I no longer care. It is just a house.”

“Mrs. Aislabie, if it would help, I will take your father’s things. I could store them until such time as you are able to use them again.”

“I’d hate to compromise you in the eyes of your parishioners.”

“I’ve decided that their good opinion matters less than that you should be able to keep these precious books and instruments. Will you let me help you?”

“If need be.”

“And the house and village—is there no hope of reprieve?”

“I believe not,” I said in a cool, light voice. “Next week, my husband and I will set sail for France. We expect work to begin during our absence.”

“What takes you to France?”

“My husband’s ship has been refurbished, and we will sail on her maiden voyage.”

“You will enjoy that, I expect,” he said, somewhat formally.

“Of course. I have never seen the sea. My mother was French. I have much to look forward to.”

“And who will be left here in your absence? To whom should we apply for advice?”

“You must ask my husband,” I said, deciding that he cared nothing for me after all, only for the village. “I believe Mr. Harford has agreed to oversee the work. And now, if you’ll excuse me . . .” And I walked away, acutely disappointed.

[ 6 ]

I
WENT TO
the library, thinking that I would go through it to the laboratory, but I’d forgotten that this was now a gambling den so foggy with smoke and liquor fumes that I could hardly get more than a few feet inside. In one corner, a swath of red cloth had been torn down, revealing the spines of our books like sinews in a wound. Lady E. was at one of the tables, red lips smiling as she made a neat fan of her cards and tossed coins into a heap. She waved gaily and beckoned me over. I would gladly have played her—I was sure I could win against a fluffy head such as hers—but at that moment a drunken squire lurched toward me, clamped his foot down on the edge of my petticoat, and pressed his whiskery face into my bosom. I gave him a shove and got myself out to the relative coolness of the hall.

Shales had now been cornered by the MP for Buckingham, but he took a step toward me. “Mrs. Aislabie . . .”

I was still angry with him and certainly didn’t want to speak to a fat politician, so I fled along the kitchen passage, intending to reach the laboratory through the cellars, but the stable yard was full of coachmen leaning on their carriage wheels, and bored horses who flung up their heads to the stars. As there was no way of getting past them to the cellar door, I kept to the shadows and darted out onto the terrace, where there was no moon but a breeze blew sappy perfume from the woods. One or two other guests had strayed outside, tempted by the mild evening, so I hurried on, my skirts lipping down the mossy steps until I was in the trees and could breathe all the good green leafiness of the woods. Sometimes I tore along as the wind got behind my hoops, sometimes I was buffeted back.

In the orchard, ash from Gill’s bonfire powdered my face. Above me the ground floor windows of Selden glowed red. Then I had a sign. A light was shining under the door of the furnace shed—my father’s light. The furnace was only ever lit for him. Everything went away except me and the light. He is there, I thought. At last he has come back. I knew for sure that he would be stooped over the fire with his coattails dragging and his wig thrown impatiently to one side as he rattled the long-handled pan we used for the precious ores. I could crouch on the earth floor and watch the flames. I would smell coal, hot stone, scorched mineral.

I ran, his name stuttering on my tongue, my skirts bundled up round my hips so that my feet could move faster and faster before he disappeared again. The door was shut. I lifted the latch quietly, so as not to disturb him, and the first thing I noticed was that the temperature was so low that no fire could possibly be burning there, and that the glow I had seen was not firelight but lamplight. Next I saw that the furnace wasn’t lit by a real fire but with only a pretense of flame, a fall of crimson. And what I saw flickering were not tongues of fire but two slender white legs, and between them were two sturdy male calves and the skirts of a red waistcoat.

It took me a while to unravel this picture, which kept changing and re-forming. What confused me was the swath of red that the lovers had arranged in the furnace mouth to protect themselves from the dirt. And then the picture suddenly clarified. This was my husband, bent over the squirming figure of a young girl, and beneath them was my cloak, the one with the crimson lining that I thought had been ruined by the dead babies.

And now I saw things very clearly indeed, and realized that the white female legs weren’t at all unwilling. The knees flexed and straightened in time to my husband’s working buttocks and were clad below the knee in a pair of white stockings with a familiar clocking on the heel and a pair of brass-buckled shoes once worn by me, and this proved that the woman to whom my husband was making love so energetically was none other than my maid, Sarah.

My husband pumped faster and faster, and Sarah’s athletic leg movements showed a familiarity with the rhythm that suggested they had done this many times before. Besides, her small right hand, which a few hours ago had pinned the pleat of ribbon to my bodice, had maneuvered itself between his thighs and was fingering his genitals and buttocks as if it knew exactly how to please him.

The trouble was that I stayed too long. It was the habit born in this furnace shed to stay and watch. I knew I had been hit, but not how badly. I saw, and at first was numb. The lovers went still, and there was a moment of dead silence before Sarah’s white face appeared over my husband’s shoulder and our eyes met. I never thought she and I meant anything to each other except that we had been thrown together as mistress and maid, but that look she gave me was one of violent connection. There was a force between us, the kind of impulse that squares two cats for a fight. I saw triumph, lust, and fear, and I saw her for the first time. Really her. Sarah. She entered me like the blade of a dagger.

I stepped outside and pulled the door shut, fumbled my way between the outbuildings, and went back to the house, where everything was much as before, except that Lady Essington’s mother had joined her at the table and the heap of coins between them had doubled in size. Harford offered me a place, and I sat down and drank glass after glass of wine while I gambled my husband’s sovereigns on three hands of quadrille and won every time.

[ 7 ]

A
VOICE IN
my ear: “Mrs. Aislabie. I wonder if I might have a word before I go.”

I played another hand. If I spoke to Shales in this bitter mood, I would wound him. But he didn’t go away, so in the end I scooped up my winnings and said, “I’ve told you. I can’t do anything for you. Speak to my husband.”

“I’ve been watching you. You are unhappy.” Though the crowd was dense as ever, I heard him clearly, as if he were the only person in the room. I always did. I could have repeated every conversation we’d ever had, word for word. But I couldn’t attend to him properly. Beyond my consciousness of him and the nightmarish scene in the furnace shed was the most dreadful realization of all: When I first saw Aislabie, I was mistaken. I thought he was one thing, but he was another. I remembered him so clearly standing on the porch with the sunlight falling on and round him, the image of a perfect young man, and now I knew that had been the false light of what my father used to call gramarye, his word for necromancy, and it had taken all this time for the enchantment to be lifted.

A glint of amber; Aislabie was in the doorway, flushed and breathless. When he caught my eye, his defiant smile told me that he knew I’d seen him with Sarah and didn’t much mind.

I took Shales’s arm. “You wanted to take my father’s things. Come then, come with me.” Clutching his sleeve, I ran along the kitchen passage and across the stable yard. This time I didn’t care who saw me as I plucked a lantern from its hook and plunged down into the cellars. On and on we went, kicking aside tumbled bee baskets and stooping in uneven passageways. When we reached the spiral staircase, I gathered my petticoats and led him upward to the laboratory, which was occupied by Gill, who’d made himself scarce during the party and was cocooned in my father’s chair. He stumbled to his feet, gaped at Shales, shuffled to the door, and disappeared.

I shot the bolt and hung up the lantern. Alcohol sang in my ears as the room tilted and went hazy. There was no other light except from the fire and the glow of embers in the furnace. Shales put his hand on the mantel, as if to anchor himself. The air was thick with the heat of a late May evening, the two fires, and the smell of sulfur, ancient wood, and Father’s tobacco.

I knew now that the laboratory had the power to reconstitute itself in different forms, depending on who was looking: holy or hellish; orderly or ramshackle. Through Shales’s eyes, I saw a space without boundaries. Darkness filled the corners and smudged the angles of cupboards and shelves. The reddish light fell on curves and corners, glass, ceramic, and oak, and there were four dimensions because all that had ever happened here was present in the pages of our books, the dust trapped in crevices and the hollows worn in the floorboards and seats of chairs. But mostly the light pooled on the alembic, in which pearly moisture droplets had collected, on my father’s alchemical notebook open at the page marked
Palingenesis
, and on the glass containing the dead rose.