The Alchemist's Daughter (41 page)

“An experiment. And I think I was justified in being reckless, since I had just discovered that my maid was pregnant by my husband, who had subsequently abandoned her. I don’t want money for myself so much as for her and for the tenants who are starving.”

“I’ve no money to spare. None. So if I were you, I’d go home this minute.” He took his watch from his pocket and stood up. “I’ll give you a couple of crowns. Should get you home. And this time stay there.”

But sometime during the past few weeks, possibly in the explosion or while reading my father’s notebooks, I had found some courage. I sprang to my feet, got between him and the door, and leaned against it.

He sighed and folded his arms. Up close, he seemed massy and immovable, and I could see the stubble on his chin and the slight coarsening of his complexion. “I’ve told you. I haven’t a bean. That’s why I’m off on
Flora
. It will save a fortune to be on board her—escape the bailiffs for a bit. You could come with me, but I’m afraid I’ve discovered that the crew might kick up. Some think it’s bad luck to have a woman on board, and there are hazards enough without that. We’re all reliant on old
Flora
sailing home weighed down with gold and rum and mahogany. Real gold, just think. Then we’ll be laughing.”

“What will she carry on the voyage out?”

I had touched on his current dearest love, and for a moment his eyes sparked. “This and that. Gunpowder and weapons mostly. There’s a great hunger for modern guns out there.”

“And where do you sail to?”

“Calabar, in Africa, as I’ve said, then on to southern America.”

“Where I presume you will sell the slaves you bought in Calabar.”

“Exactly so.”

“And how long will this take?”

“Eight months to a year. Depends on the winds. But I shall need your help, Em, if we’re going to make a go of it. You’ll have to behave like a proper lady while I’m gone, so that when I come back I can make a name for myself.”

“If behaving like a proper lady means I may behave like you, a proper gentleman, I have a great deal of freedom.”

“You’ve been in the country too long, Emilie. That’s not how a wife should speak to her husband.”

“This wife will speak any way she chooses.”

He bowed and put his hand on the doorknob. When I didn’t move, he gave a snort of laughter and took hold of my shoulder to edge me out of the way. “Truth is, I want to be left alone, Em. Happy to have you down at Selden but can’t abide you being here. I have to be free to make a life without you—even considered a divorce, but it’s so damn hard to get the knot untied. I’m hoping you’ll oblige with madness or adultery sooner or later. The world won’t take much convincing if you carry on like you did last night, turning up off the streets like a beggar. See, Emilie, the world is shrinking. You think the lens of a microscope shows you everything, but you’re wrong. Speculation is more lucrative than fact. People imagine better roads, faster printing presses, cheaper textiles—they imagine them, and the next thing is, they exist. Bit like your late lamented pa, who thought he could make gold from a lump of old metal, only my method is obviously more foolproof.”

“If you tell me where Sarah is and give me some money and an undertaking that you won’t pull down the cottages at Lower Selden, I’ll go back to the country and leave you in peace.”

“You can rest easy on the last point. No chance in the near future of building new cottages to replace the old. If you want money, you’ll have to wait for
Flora
, like the rest of us. As for Sarah, haven’t the least idea. You’ll leave tomorrow, Emilie.”

“I need money now, not in a year. I must make sure Sarah is safe.”

“Don’t worry about her. That little bitch could survive in any gutter.”

“And your child?”

“She gave you the chance to claim it. Seems you turned it down.”

“Don’t you care what happens to the baby?”

“I’ve no idea if it’s mine or not, although she says it is. If it was conceived at Selden, I’ll have to admit it was me—don’t know of any other candidates except Gill or Shales. Can’t see it, can you? In any case, I can’t be doing with a whore’s bastard for a son and heir. I needed you to make it your own. It was the only way I’d take it on.”

“I’ve changed my mind. I will acknowledge the child. At least tell me where Sarah is.”

“Too late. She’s gone crawling back to the gutter, I presume.”

“All the more reason for me to find her. Why won’t you tell me where she is? It won’t cost you anything.”

“Except my good name, for Christ’s sake.”

“Your name. And what about when people find out who you married? Perhaps there are things about me you’d also rather I keep quiet about.”

He laughed out loud. “Dearest Em. You do what you like and say what you like. I don’t care. Marrying you was the worst bit of business I ever did, as it turns out, but don’t think I didn’t have my eyes wide open. I’ve always known exactly what you are.”

[ 7 ]

F
AR FROM BEING
defeated by this spat, I felt all the more determined. It seemed to me that Aislabie and I were entirely on the level if he had never been deceived in me. So the next day we gave the footman a shilling to carry one of our boxes and off we set in procession to Monsieur Cheret’s shop, where we parted with the spyglass, the globe, various alembics, and my prism. The old dealer was clean-fingered and delicate in his dealings. He was also a pipe smoker, and the scent of his tobacco made me weaken for the first time, so that I suddenly picked up the prism and told him I would keep it after all. There was a spark of kindness in his myopic eye as he handed over twenty-five guineas and told me the address of a dealer near St. Paul’s who would give me a good price for my books.

Then we walked down to the river by the church of Magnus the Martyr and hired a boat to take us downstream to the
Flora
. I was possessed of the kind of energy that used to carry me through our most complicated and painstaking investigations. Hypothesize, experiment, observe, record, conclude. In the present circumstances, I thought my best chance was to wear my husband down by making a nuisance of myself in the world he had constructed without me. In any case, it was high time I met
Flora
.

So Annie and I sat side by side huddled against the wind and nervous of so much water beneath and around us. We passed the Tower—once the home of Sir I. N. during his spell as master of the mint—and I thought it incredible that these choppy gray waters could have flowed under the bridge at Selden, where there were woods on either side, willows dabbled their branches, and the only sign of a dwelling was a spiral of smoke from a chimney in tucked-away Selden Wick. I told Annie to look out for Sarah on every wharf, alley, and warehouse jetty because there was no telling where she might be, and after a while I almost convinced myself that she would appear suddenly in her neat white cap and cast-off slippers.

And then we were among towering ships, so many that I thought it impossible the boatman would find
Flora
. I got a crick in my neck from gazing upward at the hefty masts and jutting prows, and marveling at the way the timbers had been bent and made watertight. The water amid these giant vessels was dense with rubbish and we dodged between sailing boats and barges, each so purposeful in its business that it seemed everyone knew where they were going except us.

Suddenly we were under the bows of a frigate with three masts and furled sails. Her figurehead bore an uncanny resemblance to Lady Essington, particularly the exposed bosom and leering red lips. I asked the boatman to shout for Aislabie. We were told he was not on board but was expected any minute, so we were helped up on deck, where we stood about for a while watched by the seamen, who took such considerable interest that one of the officers suggested I might shelter in my husband’s cabin.

“First I should like to be given a tour of the ship,” I said.

“We’re loading as we speak, Mistress Aislabie. It’s not entirely convenient.”

“Nevertheless.”

His name was John Minshall, rank supercargo, in charge of trade. Minshall was a narrow-faced man with wolfish teeth and thick lashes, something of a flirt and vain enough to want to show off his knowledge to a lady. So he led us down a steep stairway to the gun deck, on which were ranked twenty great guns, ready, he said, to protect the
Flora
from privateers, pirates, and other foreign brigands. Annie followed so close she trod on my heels and nudged against my back.

The ship smelled of familiar things—timber, varnish, cooking, and also, bizarrely, of Gill, his unwashed body and old sweat. As we went deeper, she swayed and juddered because weight after weight was being loaded into her and rolled forward. Altogether I was rather taken with her at first and began to understand my husband’s enthusiasm for this orderly microcosm.
Flora
straining at her ropes reminded me of the owl we had once captured and then set free, and she creaked and rattled like Selden on a windy night.

Our guide showed us the neat little galley and crammed storerooms. Meanwhile, I fired questions at him—it was a long time since I’d had such an opportunity for learning.

“When do you sail?”

“At the end of a fortnight, all things being equal.”

“How many of you will sail on her?”

“Up to thirty-eight.”

“That includes officers and crew, I suppose, and my husband.”

“Correct.”

“And where do you all sleep?”

“Officers in the cabins. Men down in the hold.”

“What about the slaves when they join the boat? Where will they go?”

“Some will sleep in the same quarters as the officers and men.”

“And the rest?”

“They go in the hold, where the cargo is currently. One lot of goods is replaced by the other. The space down there always has to be full or the ship isn’t economical.”

“And how many slaves will you carry?”

“Six hundred, probably.”

“So many.”

He turned to me suddenly, and his long lashes veiled his eyes. “Down this hatch we go, Mrs. Aislabie, if you’re not afraid of spoiling your skirts.”

I lowered myself down a wide-runged ladder to the next deck, which was lit by square vents in the ceiling and crammed with barrels and bundles, very orderly, each labeled and pressed in tight. Minshall’s face hung over my shoulder. “We have to pack things close, else they roll about in the swell.”

“Does that rule apply to the slaves?”

“Of course. We have to build in a percentage loss, you see. We’ll likely lose between a quarter and a third even on a good voyage.”

“One-third.”

“The crew suffer more. It’s all down to the disease the slaves bring. Dysentery and such like. And they’re terrible for the smallpox.”

“You should have them inoculated.”

“Ma’am?”

The smell was so oppressive I couldn’t draw breath. “And in those bundles are weapons you say, and powder.”

“There are. The average slave costs perhaps twenty-five kegs of powder and two muskets, a few gallons of brandy, and four cutlasses.”

He was laughing at me. Annie had in the meantime taken tight hold of the gathers in the back of my skirt. Perhaps she, like me, was thinking of the shining eyes of Lady E.’s slave-child and wondering how he would be treated when he grew loutish and angry with his lot.

“If you didn’t cram them so tight, they would survive better,” I said. “A healthy body needs plenty of fresh air—not recirculated air breathed out by someone else. Experiments have been done that prove that our lungs take part of the air when they inhale so that the blood can be refreshed and revitalized. A mouse will not survive for long under a bell jar, even though not all the air will be gone from it. If so many bodies are breathing so much stale air, they’re bound to suffer.”

“Fresh air is expensive. And our other cargoes—gunpowder and weapons, for instance—they don’t need fresh air, so it’s a dilemma. In fact, too much fresh air and sunlight might cause trouble of an explosive variety.”

I remembered how Aislabie had come to Selden and talked so knowledgeably about phlogiston and the combustible nature of shipping. “I assume you transport the gunpowder unmixed,” I said.

He shrugged. “Your husband is one for being economical above all, Mistress Aislabie, particularly in those areas that are least in public view. In that he’s not unlike many shipowners, who as a breed, in my experience, tend to apply their own rules.”

We plunged down yet another hatchway, so that we must have been far below the water level. Here I couldn’t stand upright, and I put my handkerchief to my mouth. The space was already half loaded with row upon row of small barrels—gunpowder, judging by the smell—and there was a scurrying among the boards underfoot. And beneath the acrid, familiar smell of powder was another, the press of dirty, sick bodies. Here there were no vents in the side of the boat or gratings giving on to the fresh air. I suddenly had a sharp, sad memory of Shales and what he’d said about the jail in Norwich and the dubious merits of prolonging a prisoner’s life. “We’ll go up now,” I said, “and wait for my husband.” So we climbed the ladders to the main gangway and were shown from there into my husband’s cabin.

W
HEN
I
FIRST
knew Aislabie, I had found his desire to surround himself with all that was fashionable very touching, and his approach to the furnishing of
Flora
’s staterooms revealed this same exuberance. His cabin was fitted out in crimson velvet and equipped with what I took to be the latest in nautical instruments and charts. Long-lashed Minshall couldn’t resist the opportunity of handling these toys—all of which were untarnished by any contact with the elements—and showed me a quadrant for measuring the height of the sun, parallel rules for marking a course, and a celestial globe to plot the night sky. There was even a little walnut writing desk with a bound notebook open at the first page and the word
Ship’s Log
inscribed in my husband’s curling hand.