The Alchemist's Daughter Part 17

I put back my head and looked at the sky. Not a cloud. How convenient for Aislabie that Newton had died and I could be lured to London with Sarah as escort. I was glad that the baby had held fast despite their efforts, a small triumph of nature over Aislabie's calculation.

"Well, you're free to go at any time," I said. "I'm sure my husband will set you up in London. I wish you well."

"What would I want with a baby, Mrs. Aislabie?" She couldn't keep contempt out of her voice for long. "I have to go back to the old life now he's done with me. What would I do with a child?"

I opened the gate and rubbed my hands free of dust. "When I saw you together last month, he seemed to be as keen on you as ever. I suggest you follow him to London. If you're short of money, I have a few guineas."

But she sprang forward and grabbed my arm so that the hard bulge of her stomach touched my waist. "Let me stay here until the baby is born. That's all I ask. Mrs. Gill said you would be kind. She said you might take the baby, or she'd find someone who would have it-but she wouldn't lie to you, she said, or go behind your back while you was at Selden. She said I must ask you. Please, madam, don't send me away. If you'd gone to London with your husband like you was supposed to, you would never have known about it. I'd have had it quietly here, and that would be that. It was all arranged. But you wouldn't leave, and she promised me that if I told you she would take care of it all."

"There is no question of you staying here. I want nothing to do with you or your baby. I'm amazed you should ask after what I saw. You must be mad to ask."

Her eyes glittered in her pale face and she spoke so violently that her saliva fell on me. "I ask because you owe me. You took him from me and you didn't want him as he really is. You don't care for him like I do and never have. You came here and brought me with you and it has half killed me to be buried here so far from him and you never saw what was going on because you never cared."

I wrenched my arm away, but she seized my hand. I twisted out of her grasp and began to run toward the woods. She followed. "Mrs. Gill said I must tell you. She said for the baby's sake I must tell you. I knew she was wrong. Don't send me away. This baby will be the death of me." She clawed at my clothes; I unclasped her fingers one by one and tried to fight her off, but she found another hold. "I had a good life before he found me and talked me into going with him. I had a good business. He has left me with nothing. You have no idea."

Down I went, dragging her with me past the rose garden and into the water garden, where the fountain was dry and the gra.s.s crowded with dandelions. There I had to stop, else we would be upon the lake diggers and Harford's greedy gaze. "You have taken everything I had, you and him both. I had built myself up so far when he came. A trade, girls working for me. But he offered me a home, and I couldn't resist because even after you came he said he loved me and not you. And now this baby-" She released me at last, then tore at her ap.r.o.n and beat her stomach. Her face was contorted with fear or hatred or panic-perhaps all. "You and him. You have done for me. I have seen you day after day, how you were full of pity for yourself because your father died and then because you thought your husband was unkind to you, and you have no idea that you are the luckiest woman on earth."

"You're mad. You're at the root of all my misery, and you blame me. How dare you? Get out of here. Get away from Selden. You're a wh.o.r.e."

We stared at each other. She had her head up and one hand in the small of her back in the way of pregnant women, as if the last minutes had given her permission to show it at last. She was probably the same age as me, though I had always thought her far older because of her pinched mouth and deft fingers. My hair had come down, and I was half a head taller than her in my shabby dress and dirty ap.r.o.n, and as always in her presence I felt unfinished, badly put together. Once again she had trumped me, and though she seemed to be the loser, she was stronger because she had been everywhere before me. The look in her eyes was oddly familiar. I knew it from some distant corner of my past. My father, was it, when he threatened me with his notebook?

And then the fight went out of her eyes, and she started to sob and plead again: "I have been waiting all this last month for an answer. Since he went away. Say you'll take the child. Don't send me away till afterward."

"I've given my answer. There can never be any other. Have you thought about my feelings?"

"Feelings. Feelings. You and feelings have nothing to do with this. This is my life. I have been so sick sometimes that I have been half dead, but I could never let it show. Instead I had to go on and on with your life until you chose to say you'd had enough of me. I swear, if you send me away and I have the child, it will die. I've spent my life waiting to be picked up and f.u.c.ked up and tossed aside. And I know you, Mrs. Aislabie. Jesus Christ, you have no idea how I know you. I know you to the very core. And you are stone cold. You had him and you lost him, and you're sending me away out of spite. You're no different from all the rest despite your strangeness, despite you pretend to be better . . ."

"That's enough."

She had lifted her skirts and was toiling up the steps away from me. I glimpsed her little ankles in my cast-off shoes. Then she turned, the she-cat. "You took him, and now you don't want him. Any proper woman would have wanted him, but not you. I hate you, and I hate this house. I hate the dark. The dark kills me. You drove him away. You didn't want him." But at least she went, dragging her suddenly heavy frame up the steps, still sobbing, leaving me to stare down at the embryonic lake.

[ 6 ].

AFTER A WHILE, I walked back to the bee orchard, past the hives, where the bees were agitated by the din of demolition, and into the woods. A strong breeze scuffled the underside of leaves, but whenever I emerged into a clearing the heat was scorching. Aislabie had vowed to make these woods fit for hunting again, to breed pheasants and manage the undergrowth, but for now all was tranquil, though the old paths were tangled and my ankles got scratched with thorns. By the time I reached the oak tree, I was so hot that I tore off my ap.r.o.n, dropped it among the nettles, stuffed my cap into my pocket, and pressed my forehead against the ancient bark.

A baby. An Aislabie b.a.s.t.a.r.d. A baby, and not my own.

I felt the warm trunk under my pin-thin body. A baby.

There were other creatures moving in the woods. I heard the quiet breathing of the deer. Well, watch out, I told them. Watch out, because one day soon he'll come crashing through the trees on his great horse, and he'll be after you. Just you see.

I stumbled on, and all around me there was a cracking of twigs and rushing of feet as they leaped away. The bracken had grown to thigh level, and I beat it aside until I came to the broad track that led to the bridge and the village of Lower Selden. I hurried on, regardless of the heat, until I reached the river. A few yards along the bank was a willow shading a little gravel beach. I plunged my face in the soft water, bundled my hair back into the cap, washed my hands, and drew a deep breath.

The lane leading to the church cottage was silent in the afternoon heat. Even the birds had stopped singing. A gust of wind drove me in a funnel of hot air to his worn steps. The door to his house was wide open, and I felt a surge of joy. He was back.

I knocked and called, "h.e.l.lo. h.e.l.lo," but n.o.body answered. The doors on either side of the pa.s.sageway were closed. My voice shattered the calm of the afternoon. When I knocked and shouted again, the door to the kitchen was pushed open at last and the sour-faced maid appeared. She obviously took me for one of the girls from the village, because she folded her arms and leaned on the newel post. "Yes."

"I'd like to speak to Reverend Shales."

She recognized me and straightened up. "He's not here. He's far away in Norwich."

"When will he be back?"

"Lord knows. Ask the curate. I'm sick to death of people knocking here for him."

I was dizzy with sudden disappointment after the long walk. "Might I have a gla.s.s of water?"

She peered at me. "Of course, madam."

"May I sit down?"

"Of course." She opened the door to Shales's study and shuffled away.

I sat in the chair by the desk and closed my eyes. In a minute, she came back with a jug and gla.s.s. "Are you all right, madam?"

"Very hot. Perhaps I could rest for a while."

"I'm sure." She hovered for a moment so close that I could feel the heat of her body, then she went back to the kitchen. The front door had been left open, and a draft blew into the room. I sipped water, earthy and ice cold. My head throbbed. A window was open, and greenery spilled in from the garden. A robin began to sing throatily, and a small spider dangled from the cas.e.m.e.nt.

I sank down a little on the hard chair, adjusting my weight so that one knee was pressed against the desk and my other foot stretched out almost to the hearth. The robin went on singing, and a shaft of sunlight shone directly onto my hand. I breathed the scent of embers, dust, and beeswax and became aware of the ticking of a clock, deep and rhythmic, with a faint click between each movement of the pendulum. My hand slid away from the gla.s.s and dropped into my lap.

When I woke up, the light had changed and the sunbeam shifted onto a blotter on the desk. Pain still jabbed my right temple. The two distinct sides of Shales's life lay on either side of me. On the windowsill was the row of maimed plants, and on his desk the apparatus for measuring airs, including a covered pot of some brownish seal-beeswax and turpentine, judging by the smell.

Beyond the desk, in an alcove beside the mantel, were his books of natural philosophy, some of them-Lemery's Cours de Chymie, Le Fevre's Traicte de la Chymie, Beguin's Tyrocinium Chymic.u.m-so familiar that I could have opened any page and recited a paragraph or two almost verbatim. A pile of notebooks had been tidied away onto a shelf, and I recognized his upright, bold hand on one of them: The Imbibing of Water Through Branch and Root.

On the side of the room facing the church there was a gla.s.s case of sacred texts, including a shabby Bible, prayer books, a copy of the Holy Office, and the work of other writers largely unknown to me because my father never bought books that weren't concerned with natural philosophy: Locke, Defoe, Milton, Dryden, La Fontaine. Above was a plain wooden crucifix, another aspect of Shales's life I couldn't comprehend.

I listened to the clock and the robin. Until now, I hadn't worked out what I would have said if Shales had been at home, if he had come to the door in his shirtsleeves and smiled that wonderful quick, kind smile, taken my hand, and brought me in. Now I knew.

I knew.

I stayed as the afternoon deepened and the room cooled. I even kicked off my torn silk slippers and planted my stockinged feet on the rough boards. The clock struck six, and a whiff of woodsmoke breezed in from some nearby chimney. When I bent my head, I could see the church, squat and ramshackle, sinking into the graveyard; and if I looked the other way, through the curtain of ivy and wisteria, I saw the varied greens of the experimental plants in his garden. His servant stirred; I heard her shuffle across the garden, pull open the privy door, close it behind her. A few minutes later, she came back, and there was the clatter of a bowl on the table and the thump of something soft-meat, possibly, or a loaf.

Then I realized that I wasn't the only woman in the room.

Apart from the candlesticks, the other ornament on the mantel was a miniature in an oval frame. My skirts rustled shockingly, an unstructured sound in that orderly s.p.a.ce, as I went to pick it up. The woman in the painting had a strong, plain face with a longish nose, small mouth, steady eyes, and light-brown hair drawn back straight from the forehead. Her throat was bare, but a muslin scarf was tucked into the square neck of her bodice. She seemed tranquil, but it was not the most skillful of portraits, and I could read nothing into the angle of her chin or the slight smile. When I turned the miniature over, I saw there was a slip of paper stuck to the back written in a neat, sloping hand: For Thomas, on his birthday. Hannah Shales. Twickenham. April 1724.

The handwriting told me more about the dead woman than the portrait. It was an elaborate, careful hand, very unlike my workaday script. I stared again into her eyes and tried out her name. Hannah Shales. A good name, balanced. Hannah Shales.

And then I noticed, pushed back on a shelf, a faded pincushion of pink velvet in the shape of a heart. It bristled with pins and needles threaded in white or black, and beside it was a sewing case embroidered with the initials H.B. A couple of the needles were so fine that only the steadiest, daintiest hand might have threaded them. One, filled with cream silk thread, had been in the cushion so long that there was a rusty mark where it pierced the velvet. From the edge of the sewing case poked a narrow strip of crumpled lace.

I replaced the miniature Mrs. Shales exactly on the same sliver of dust-free mantel and sat down again, this time in Shales's chair on the other side of the desk. From here, I could see the whole room, including Mrs. Shales, but not her sewing case. This is what Shales must see every day: the row of religious texts, the window overlooking the street and the stone wall supporting the graveyard, the ticking clock, the miniature of his wife.

How he must love her, I thought, to keep her portrait so close. A cold voice in my head added, n.o.body ever had your portrait painted. n.o.body loved you enough.

I looked across at the empty chair, my chair. All the time I sat there, Mrs. Shales had been watching me. I imagined my own drooping head, my untidy black hair, my faded gown. Suddenly I heard myself speak quite loudly into the quiet room. "No," I said. "No, I can't. I won't. Don't ask me."

The kitchen door burst open and the maid came puffing in. "I had no idea you was still here. Are you all right? Will there be anything else?"

I stumbled to my feet. "Thank you, I feel much better now. I'll be on my way." She stared in astonishment as I trod my feet back into the slippers, took a last look at his desk, the pincushion, and the shifting shadows on the white walls, then fled the house.

[ 7 ].

THE NEXT MORNING, I was woken at dawn by the workmen. n.o.body brought my breakfast, and my clothes were in a heap where I had left them. The chamber pot hadn't been emptied since the previous morning, so the air was sour. I put on my crumpled gown and went looking for Sarah. Her room was bare, not just of her but of all her things. The bed was stripped and the sheets neatly folded.

On the far side was an open door leading to the closet in which she kept my clothes. The last time I looked a few months ago, this closet had been tight packed as a dressmaker's shop, half a dozen gowns billowing from their pegs, shelves piled with starched linen, shoes arranged on racks, hats on stands with the feathers straightened and the ribbons washed, a cascade of petticoats and hoops. Now the closet was empty except for one old petticoat heaped in a corner and the green silk gown. Every other item was gone, even the feathered monstrosity.

Those gowns were worth a small fortune; in fact, now that I thought about it, they had probably been my greatest financial a.s.set. Their bulk would have filled at least two large chests. How on earth had she spirited them away?

The house vibrated with noise as I raced through the downstairs rooms and looked in the pantries, the kitchen, and the dairy-no sign of the Gills or Sarah, though Harford was under the arch, his sleeves already soggy with heat. He doffed his hat. "I hope, madam, that you haven't been too discomposed by all the noise . . ." I rushed past him across the lawn and through the gate to Mrs. Gill's garden.

The plants were ravaged, their seeds and blossoms harvested. The cottage door was wide open, but the kitchen was empty. I walked through the neat parlor to the front door, lifted the latch, and found myself in the packed village street. The fair was in full swing, and I hadn't even noticed.

I knew that Mrs. Gill would have set up her stall under the churchyard wall, so I made my way there, picking up my skirts to avoid heaps of dung. A couple of youths were in compet.i.tion to tip flagon after flagon of ale into their mouths; I pa.s.sed stalls of cheeses rank with mold, gingerbread swarming with flies, overripe strawberries seeping juice, a heap of gaudy neckerchiefs, and raw-timbered ladders ranked against a cottage wall. But it wasn't until I was deep in the crowds and had paused a moment to peer over someone's shoulder at a couple of farmers arguing over the price of a calf-the creature rolled her tender brown eyes and defecated into the mud-that I became fully alert and realized the danger I was in.

Shales had given us plenty of warning that there was unrest in the village, but I had a.s.sumed they were angry with Aislabie, not me. Now I noticed that n.o.body smiled and that wherever I stood a ring of silence formed around me. I was afraid of the absorption in the eyes of people who usually led lives rigorously ordered by the rising and setting of the sun. They had abandoned themselves to strange fascinations and cruel pleasures: gawping at a pig-faced lady with a huge silver ring through her nostrils, at a sly-eyed mountebank selling cures for toothache. I had seen this possessed look in the face of Aislabie when he lay with me in the orchard and in my father when he was nearing the end of an experiment, and it terrified me because it left me out.

I couldn't get close to Mrs. Gill because a little throng of people were waiting for a consultation. On the table, held down firmly by Annie, lay a purple-faced baby with eyes weeping yellow pus. I stood aside while Mrs. Gill dropped salve into the child's furious eyes, then I went behind the stall and touched her elbow.

She eyed me coldly. "I haven't time," she said, then turned her back and beckoned the next customer, a boy with a putrid boil on his neck. Bewildered, I drifted over to a nearby ribbon seller and fingered some lengths of material. I was conscious of shifting and whispering behind me as I held up a pink strip and smiled. The ribbon seller seemed to smile back, though she didn't pay much attention to me because she was gossiping to a customer.

The ribbon was cheap and soft-not like the glossy silks Sarah had stolen, but of another texture, dull on one side, shiny on the other, which for a moment made me yearning and dreamy, so that I forgot where I was and touched it to my lips. This pale pink ribbon was the precise width and texture of the frayed sc.r.a.p left by my mother and which now hung round my neck to hold the laboratory key.

Another woman had joined the conversation. ". . . this place was too small for him. They say he's got short of money."

"n.o.body of his sort of standing would stay in such a G.o.dforsaken hole for long," said another.

"I'm disappointed in him. I thought he'd see us through this."

"Never trust a man of the cloth," said the ribbon seller, and she laughed. But when she saw that I was listening, her eyes hardened. I let the ribbon fall on the table and turned away, but I was pressed so close by the crowd that my thighs were bruised by the table edge. I smiled again and fumbled at the waist of my gown as if searching for money, but the ribbon seller's lips were now pursed together, and for a moment I thought she must have some disfigurement. Then I realized she was gathering spittle.

The crowd behind me went quiet, and a man turned his bearded face to mine so close that I saw flaking skin caught in his whiskers, cracked flesh at the corner of his mouth, broken veins in his cheek. He looked through me, his muscles slack with malice.

"Let me pa.s.s," I said, but n.o.body moved. "Let me pa.s.s." My voice rose and wavered. I took a step back from the table, and my foot landed on someone's toe.

The bearded man clutched my elbow and spoke hot in my ear: "Mistress Aislabie, I'd like a word, if you please."

Where was Mrs. Gill? Surely she wouldn't let them hurt me. A flock of sheep was being driven up the street behind the crowd, and there was a great confusion of frightened animals. The man kept his hand on my arm and drew me along. People stepped aside one at a time until we were in an alley where there was a bit of shade. I was pressed so near to him that I could smell his sweat and feel the heat of his skin. "You probably don't know who I am. Barton. Blacksmith. My daughter Annie sometimes used to work up at the house."

"Yes. Yes. I know."

"I should like to show you what we've come to at Selden while you've been drawing up plans for your great house."

He kept such tight hold of my elbow that my flesh ached. I tried to form the right words to explain that he'd got it very wrong, but my hat had fallen back and the ribbon was tight round my throat. Meanwhile, the blacksmith was hurrying me along the main street, and I was conscious that a little crowd of children followed behind.

We were soon out of the village street and among a cl.u.s.ter of tumbledown cottages with gla.s.sless windows and ragged thatch. He pushed open a warped door and urged me in. The sun had baked through the broken roof and made a reeking oven of the place, but some poor creature lay in the corner huddled under a heap of blankets while a baby mewled in its crib and a hen pecked at the earth floor.

"n.o.body's been paid since April for all the laboring that's gone on to get your house emptied and the crops weeded," said the blacksmith, who still had tight hold of my arm, "and there's rumors that this year's will be a bad harvest. The likes of this widow Mrs. Moore and her grandchild are dying for want of decent nourishment. What will you do about it, Mrs. Aislabie?"

The heat pressed hard down on me and flies buzzed in the chamber pot. The smell was very bad, perhaps worse than the dead babies.

I looked him in the eye. He didn't seem a bad or violent man, just angry. But he frightened me because I had no answers for him, so I tore away and got back into the main street. There I was worse off than ever, because the crowd had gathered again and stood in a semicircle, waiting. Some faces I recognized from church; some were strangers, probably from neighboring villages. They were led by the ribbon seller, with her bitter mouth and staring eyes.

There was no way past them. The sun burned down on my bare head. I smelled manure and gingerbread, my own fright, excrement, and sick human flesh from the cottage behind me. My skirts crumpled in my fists, and I thought of my quiet laboratory, of my husband sailing away before a strong wind, and of Shales, who wasn't coming back.

They came closer. A child had found his way through the forest of legs and stared at me as if I was part of some show. I backed a little and found that others had crept round behind me. I was hemmed in.

The ribbon seller spat in my face-it was almost a relief to feel the soft saliva on my cheek. Perhaps this was enough punishment, and it would end here. I thought that if I met her eye, all would be well, but her mouth was working and another gob of spittle darkened the skirt of my gown. I thought, That will sponge off; Sarah will deal with it. From far away, the blacksmith's voice said, "Now, now that's enough," but the crowd shuffled closer. Then something small and hard hit the side of my neck and fell to the ground with a rattle. "b.a.s.t.a.r.d," someone shouted.

A little murmur went through the crowd, like the wind in my oak tree. The blacksmith said loudly, "That's enough. She's had a fright. I'm sure she'll speak up for us now."

I turned my head to thank him, and from the corner of my eye saw another stone, much bigger, hurtle from the crowd. I twisted my neck, but it got my cheek and breast, and then a dead weight cracked against the back of my head. The blacksmith had me firmly by the arm and was pulling me backward. The crowd was yelling, some were backing away, others pressing close enough to get a fistful of skirt and yank hard. My other hand was grabbed, and the fingers wrenched apart so violently that pain shot up my arm. Then suddenly through it all I heard Mrs. Gill's voice come in fits and starts: "Stop this. Stop. Are you out of your minds? Are you savages? What is this?"

The crowd parted, and I was hauled along the street, thrust through a gate, and pushed down on something hard. "She'll be safe here. I'll see to them," someone said. Then there was the click of a heavy latch and sudden quiet.

There were shouts on the other side of the wall, and after a while other noises came back: the fiddle again, cows lowing, poultry. I clutched my injured hand and stared down at the mucousy stain in the lap of my gown, at swept cobbles, and, a little distance away, a pair of small feet in heavy boots.

Mrs. Gill said, "Fetch some water for Mrs. Aislabie, if you please."

The boots moved away. She knelt in front of me and fumbled with my hat strings until the hat fell from my neck and allowed me to breathe more freely. "Let me see your face."

I shut my eyes and felt her dab at my cheek with something soft and run her hands over the back of my head where the stone had got me. "Tell me where it hurts, Emilie."

The hobnails rang, there was the clang of a pitcher, and a beaker was held to my lips. More cold water trickled onto my stinging cheek. "Emilie, show me that you can hear me."

It was weeks since I had looked at her properly, and it was a shock to see the fright in her eyes and the sweat on her brow. "You must be out of your mind coming here," she said. "Do you really have no idea what's going on?"

I was still dizzy from the blow to my head. "Were they talking about Shales when they said he wasn't coming back?"

The blacksmith's boy had been leaning on the wall with one foot propped behind him. When she gave him a nod, he levered himself forward and ambled away into the smithy.

"Lord knows what they were talking about. Why can't you pay attention?"

"Why are you so angry?"

She stared at me until her eyes bulged. "Have you really no idea?"

"What have I done? G.o.d knows I've done nothing."

"Then who sent that wretched girl away?"

"She was carrying my husband's child."

"Have you no mercy?"

I shook my head to clear it. "She was my husband's mistress. She had been sleeping with him all through my marriage. She stole my clothes. Why do you side with her?"

"It's not a matter of siding with her. I told her you'd be kind. I trusted you."