The Alchemist's Daughter (4 page)

My father never registered extremes of temperature, though his nose was purple. Sometimes he paused, cocked his head, and listened for small movements in the woods, while I shifted from foot to foot and folded my arms tight across my chest. When we turned off the path, he halted altogether and stared down at a couple of mushrooms capped with ice. With the brass tip of his staff, he upended one so that its white stalk was exposed. “
Lepista nuda
. Name the parts, Emilie.”

“Umbo, velum, gills . . .”

“The Latin.”

“Lamellae, stipe, volva . . .” The words dropped like stones into the silence.

My father sighed. “You name the parts of the mushroom, Emilie, as if you cared nothing for them. Now tell me how even the study of a fungus illustrates the existence of an intelligent and powerful God.”

I looked at the mushroom. It was . . . a mushroom—but I remembered a time not long ago when a mushroom would have filled me with wonder, because I knew that God permeated everything, every inch of space, each particle, water drop, or spark. I chanted, “Because the mushroom perfectly performs its function.”

“You sound irritated. You think you know everything, but you are only at the beginning of knowledge. We must never rest, Emilie, until we have understood it all. A mushroom is easy to study—we can cut it up and look at it under our microscope, and if it withers we can pick another the next day. But the essential secrets of life—fire, air, water—still elude us, despite the astounding efforts of Sir Isaac.”

I had stopped listening because there was a commotion of cracking twigs, and then Reverend Shales appeared, muffled in a vast topcoat, the lower part of his face hidden in its high collar, a sack slung over his shoulder and his fingertips white with cold. “Forgive me,” he said, removing his hat. “I heard your voices.”

This was the first time I could remember that my father and I had been disturbed on our walk, although we sometimes came across village children or heard the rustle of hastily retreating footsteps. Father was bound to resent the intrusion, but when I looked into Shales’s face I was startled. Although he was smiling, there was a look of desolation in the back of his eyes. He needed us to talk to him.

“What’s in your bag?” I asked.

He fumbled with the rope. Inside was the scent of newly cut wood, curls of bark and specimens sliced from fallen branches. “I have been studying bark,” he said, “and its purpose in the respiration of plants. Since coming to Selden, I have found great riches in these woods.”

“I’m relieved to hear it,” said my father. “I tell Emilie that there is a lifetime’s study within a mile’s radius of Selden.” Then he set off, leaning heavily on his staff to steady himself on the frozen ground.

The path was too narrow to walk side by side, but Shales kept close to my shoulder and at one point reached forward to lift a bramble out of the way. “I read your book,” I said. “The detail of your observations into plant respiration is extraordinary. And the illustrations—are they your own?”

“All my own. I’m afraid those drawings were a distraction. I spent so long on them that I neglected my research.”

“They are very clear. Delicate.”

“Plants have such complicated arrangements of leaves that a great deal of simplification is needed. Do you draw, Mistress Selden?”

My father, a few steps ahead, would be listening hawkishly. “I do draw, but not well. I haven’t much patience.”

“Your father tells me that you have been assisting him in his investigations into the nature of fire. Will you publish your findings?”

I stopped so suddenly that he put his hand on my elbow to prevent himself from colliding with me. His eyes were the greenish gray of still water, but his face was alight with interest. He really did think I might be capable of writing a paper on the nature of fire.

My father turned back and peeked at us from under his wig. “Our ideas are half formed, so we are in no position to publish.” Then he pointed among the trees with his staff. “This is our way home, Shales.”

Shales bowed. I tried to find words that would keep him with us a little longer, but Father was already moving away. All I could do was offer my gloved hand. The light had faded, and when I glanced back Shales was already just a shadow among the trees.

My father didn’t speak to me all the way home. I had no idea what I’d done to annoy him, and in any case I was too preoccupied to care. I longed to run after Shales, to invite him to Selden and prolong a conversation that had opened up the most unexpected possibilities. Instead, when we reached the bottom of the steps leading to the terraces, I said I would go and warm myself at Gill’s bonfire. So while my father toiled up to the house, I skirted the lower lawn and ran to the orchard, a half acre or so of apple trees planted last century by a plant-loving Selden favored by Charles I (a Selden on the winning side, but not for long). In one corner of this orchard was an apiary, including one hive with a glass side so that we could study the habits of the bees. At the far end, nearest the house, was the patch of ground where Gill lit his bonfires. He was there still, feeding the flames with brushwood and old cuttings.

When he saw me, he stopped work, leaned on his fork, and stared from under his wild eyebrows. He was the darker side of vegetable, the inner leaf of old cabbage, the earthy root of parsnip. He and his clothes had a density that repelled me now that I was grown up, though when I was small and he used to carry me to bed I’d snuggle my face into his shoulder and delight in his muddy smell. For a while, I stood on the opposite side of the fire, turning my hands to the heat and lifting my face to the light of a rosy winter sunset. I knew that Gill was watching me, because he always did.

The heat on my hands and face made the rest of me colder, so after a few minutes I moved toward the house, but Gill blocked my way to the gate. When I tried to get past him, he took a step toward me. I stood my ground, shivering. There was a heaviness in his small eyes that I had noticed quite often recently. At some indefinable moment, he had ceased to be the third great prop of my life and instead had become elusive, even shifty. But most of my mind was still on Shales, who was walking alone in the woods and who had brushed my shoulder as he hooked the bramble aside. Then I became aware that Gill was breathing heavily and had raised his hand, ingrained with sixty-odd years of Selden dirt, and brought it close to my breast.

Before he could touch me, our eyes met and I saw that his were moist, as if he had been drinking. I came to my senses at last and realized that unless I acted, something terrible and irrevocable would happen, so I spoke the two words that would put a stop to it all: “My father.” Then I added more gently, “My father will need a good fire in the library. Our walk has made us very cold.”

His hand fell as he took a step back then turned, opened the gate, and walked away. The bonfire whispered as I crouched to draw the last warmth from the embers. My heart ached, but I wasn’t sure why.

[ 3 ]

W
ITHIN A MONTH
, my father had fallen out with Shales once and for all, and there was no further communication between us. I was even forbidden to attend church. The disagreement was fundamental and concerned alchemy.

In the spring of that year, we began preparing for our most ambitious project ever. Our plan was to grow a rose from its own ashes. My father had been reading the work of the French physician Joseph Du Chesne, who says that each living thing has its own signature, which exists forever and makes it utterly unique. Du Chesne said he had once seen twelve sealed vessels in which flowering plants had been grown from their ashes. His view was substantiated by the great Paracelsus, by Daniel Coxe, by Jacques Gafferel, and by others. After all, transmutation is at the root of all alchemy, and if a metal such as tin can be dissolved in acid and restored by the action of an alkali, or water become steam and then water again through condensation, why couldn’t the same principle apply to the recovery of a plant?

My father was sixty-eight years old, and I suspect all too conscious of his own mortality. He had a persistent cough, and his breathing was labored. I was so terrified by the prospect of being left alone that I would have sold my soul to prolong his life. This process of regeneration seemed to me a matter of great urgency. If we could restore a rose, what else might be possible?

So we set about devising a method that would apply the most ancient art of alchemy to the most modern discoveries about plants. We would take the ashes of a rose and restore it to life by adding the fundamental ingredients of life itself: heat, warmth, and the alchemical elixir. The latter we would brew in our laboratory; for advice on the former, we needed a modern authority, and who better than the new incumbent, Reverend Shales, who, according to Mrs. Gill, had already impressed freeholders in the village with his knowledge about fertilizing and resting the soil?

He was invited to call at eleven o’clock one morning. Presumably he had to show himself in through the kitchen passage, because he appeared suddenly at the library door. I had been told to make a record of the interview and was seated at a little table by the window. Instead of ignoring me, as any of my father’s other visitors would have done, Shales came up and bowed. I pushed back my chair, stumbled, and was supported by his steady hand. Before I could do more than glance into his eyes, my father had called, “Shales,” and directed him to an upright chair by the fire.

Shales folded his long frame onto the narrow seat and held himself well back from the blaze. A copy of his book lay between them.

“I am very pleased with this volume, Shales,” said my father, “and wish to question you further about your findings on the purpose of sap, and the properties in sunlight that enable a plant to grow. I note from your introduction that you see the
signature of the hand of God in each plant
. I wonder if you could expand on that.”

“Only that the more I study even the smallest, humblest part of Creation, the more I marvel at the detail and ingenuity in the design.”

“I thought you might be referring to another kind of signature—the signature that is the key to uniqueness—the key to life itself.”

A long pause. A sigh. I couldn’t see Shales’s face, just his cheekbone. “I wonder if you are referring to the alchemical meaning of signature.”

My father leaned forward on his staff, which was propped between his knees. “You know of it then.”

Another pause. “When I accepted this living at Selden, I made it very clear that I would have nothing to do with alchemy.”

“I am hoping to convert you. This year I am conducting an experiment with plants, the first, I believe, of its kind since the work of Du Chesne on regeneration.”

“Regeneration. Palingenesis. Sir, I cannot support you in this.”

“I don’t ask for support. Merely for cooperation.”

“I cannot. I regard this kind of experiment as a form of blasphemy. Nature renews life. There is no need for any kind of meddling.”

My pen faltered.
Meddling
. I couldn’t write that.

My father’s hand approached his wig, a dangerous sign. “You sound like the church fathers who condemned Galileo. The old system with the earth at the center suited them, so they wouldn’t look at any other. Galileo couldn’t prove his alternative theory, so they won their case.”

“I am not relying just on observation or on what suits me. I know that nature already restores itself. When a rose dies, a new rose grows from another part of the stem. If you come to my house—and I hope that both you and your daughter will be frequent visitors—I will show you any number of extraordinary experiments. I will show you how to graft a rose and how a plant takes in water through its branches as well as its roots, but I will not participate in alchemy.”

My hand trembled as my father plucked his wig from his head, replaced it, banged his staff, would not look at Shales. “So. So we stop at what we know and see. We look no further. Very good, Shales.”

“In this case, yes. We are not dealing with objects or even stars. In this case we are dealing with death itself.”

“What we observe to be death.”

“Sir, there are many iniquities in this life. In my work, I meet the dying and bereaved every day. I have seen young children fail, and women and their new born infants die in childbed. I would do everything in my power to restore them, but in the history of mankind only Jesus Christ had that gift. There is much we could do to improve life—decent food, medicine, clean air, warm homes. Let’s concentrate on what sustains life, not on some fruitless attempt to bring life back.”

“So you won’t help me?”

“In anything else, yes. In this, no. I can’t assist you, sir. I believe alchemy to be counter to both the laws of my religion and the laws of nature.”

“Laws of nature. Religion. How can any natural philosopher work within the bounds of religion? I won’t be contained by such pettiness.” By now both men were on their feet. My father’s head was level with the middle button on Shales’s coat, but he was powerful: hands clenched on his staff, eyes on fire. “I am surprised by your lack of faith, Shales. At Selden, we believe that there is more to natural philosophy than experimentation and calculation. Do you think Newton would have uncovered the laws of the universe if he had been bound by what he could measure or by what men thought to be the laws of nature? He began by searching, he applied his great mind to his observations, but he had the courage to believe that the very process of looking would lead to enlightenment. He knew that a phenomenon does not exist until man has found it.”

I willed Shales not to be so rigid. Surely he could show a little compassion to an old man, even if he disagreed with the principles of his research. After a moment, he said quietly, “I will consider your arguments, of course, and if I find that they convince me, I shall change my mind. In the meantime, I regret that in this one area I cannot help you.”

My father was stuttering with rage. “In the meantime . . . There is no other time, Shales. I won’t ask you again. I won’t have you blighting my work. Good day to you, sir.”