The Alchemist's Daughter Part 24

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

"Don't worry about her. That little b.i.t.c.h 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 wh.o.r.e's b.a.s.t.a.r.d 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 ].

FAR 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 spygla.s.s, 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 circ.u.mstances, 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 pa.s.sed 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 s.p.a.ce 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 cutla.s.ses."

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 a.s.sume 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 s.p.a.ce 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.

WHEN 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.

"But surely to use the sun as a measure is dangerous?" I said. "How do you withstand the glare of the sun at noon?"

"Exactly, Mrs. Aislabie. Hence this new type of quadrant, or backstaff. We turn our backs to the sun, thus, and measure the shadow it casts. It's all about finding our position. Lat.i.tude and longitude. Lat.i.tude we can find by using the compa.s.s. Longitude is trickier and very complicated."

"I noticed that some of the ships on the river were painted white underneath. Why was that?"

"Barnacles. They latch onto the boat and can affect her seaworthiness in time. Some people believe that a mix of tallow, resin, and sulfur will protect the hull from barnacles."

"Flora isn't painted, though."

Minshall said nothing, and I wondered what other cost-cutting measures had been employed by Aislabie. Meanwhile, Minshall had sidled closer and seemed to be snuffing the air near my neck, so I thanked him for his time and said we would wait here for my husband.

When he'd gone, I sank onto a velvet couch and indicated that Annie should do the same, but she refused and instead peered anxiously out of the large windows as if afraid we might be cast off and on our way to Calabar.

One way and another Flora had been a shock. I realized now that I had thought of her as a kind of whim, like the projected dome and cascade at Selden, but I had discovered she was in deadly earnest. And Aislabie had transferred his most treasured possessions here. He'd even hung the landscape by Lorrain, which used to be in Hanover Street, between two of the portholes, and mounted copies of the plans made by Harford and Osborne for the house and garden at Selden in frames under gla.s.s on a little side table.

We waited half an hour or so. I played with the instruments and fathomed how to use the quadrant, but I was distracted by those plans for Selden. I kept going back for another look at that gracious mansion with its twin flights of steps, pillars, and porticoes, until in the end the sight of it made me so angry that I pushed the gla.s.s aside, pulled out the plans, rolled them up, and tucked them into a pocket.

It was time to go. The more time I spent on board Flora, the less I wanted to be there, and it occurred to me that Aislabie must have been warned of our presence and chosen not to come aboard. In any case, one of my main purposes in paying this visit had been defeated. I had wanted to be part of Flora, to give myself an ent.i.tlement to her profits and the good things she could bring back, but such was my disgust for everything aboard that I wanted nothing to do with her. So I told Annie sharply we should leave, and suddenly in a great hurry we climbed over the side and into the waiting boat. Shivering we set off, and shivering we sat in silence until we got back to London Bridge.

[ 8 ].

THE NEXT DAY was Sunday, and any respectable business was closed. I should have waited in Hanover Street to discover the outcome of my visit to Flora, but instead I set off on another foolhardy and extravagant journey. Although I was ashamed of spending some of the precious parrot bowl money on an excursion that would bring us no closer to Sarah, my feet carried me down to the jetty, with Annie, of course, in tow, and my hand released five shillings into the palm of a boatman who promised to get us to Twickenham and back by evening.

This time we went upstream and there was hardly any traffic on the river. The temperature had dropped still farther, and there was a distinct whiff of autumn in the air. Yet I was glad to be on the move again, especially as we were rowing away from Flora and toward Selden. And this expedition could do no harm, I argued to myself. It was only to fill the time.

Annie trailed her hand and stared at London as it tumbled down to the riverbank and then farther upstream unfolded itself into gardens and scrubby fields. When last I made this journey, I had been sick with longing for a glimpse of my father. Now when I thought of Selden, I saw broken walls, the laboratory blown apart, and Shales stooped to enter the homes of his parishioners or at work in his leafy little study. I had thought, as I traveled home in January, that I was significant. Now our boat seemed a mere speck, an irrelevance to the great onward rush of time. And this made me understand the imperative of palingenesis. My father, sensing approaching death, had wanted so badly to live again.

At Twickenham, I told the boatman we would be an hour at most, and he shipped the oars, hauled his boat up the jetty, and left us on the pebbly beach. Annie stood patiently beside me, but I couldn't move. It was as if I was trespa.s.sing on private property. This was the view Shales had seen each time he came down to the river: maybe this same pair of swans, though with a different clutch of cygnets dipping their scruffy necks; that far view of poplars on the opposite bank; that same farmer holding the same cart horse by the reins.

I turned away at last, walked up the beach, and crossed the lane. Here was the rectory with a smart front door that Mrs. Shales must have stood at several times a day to receive visitors, the gabled porch where Shales would have left his boots, the garden battered by recent rain but full of beans, cabbages, and fruit trees. I noted that one or two had been lopped or engrafted, a sure sign that Shales had once lived here. And to the left, set well back in an orderly graveyard, was a low church with a slatted wooden tower.

The congregation was just spilling out and we hung well back, watching a portly cleric greet his parishioners. His alb fluttered in the wind, and at one point he put his hand on his wig to prevent it from blowing away. As soon as the last person had walked by, he scurried back into the porch; a few minutes later, I saw him blow across the graveyard toward a little gate admitting him to the rectory garden.

The church door stood wide open. Inside was the familiar perfume of cool stone, summer flowers, and the lingering breath of the congregation. Annie crept over to a side chapel and spelled out the inscriptions on the memorials-poor soul, she was not yet able to tell if the words were in Latin or English-while I sat in a pew and stared. The hexagonal pulpit was a touching affair with carvings of squirrels and rabbits running through the panels, and I imagined Shales climbing the four steep steps and standing before the congregation to address them with moderate words of praise and commitment.

After a while, I got up to read the plaques, but none was to his wife, although his name was inscribed at the bottom of a list of former inc.u.mbents: Thomas Shales, 1710a1725. I thought of Mrs. Shales arranging greenery in gla.s.s jars or polishing the bra.s.ses, a calm, small-mouthed woman, as unlike myself as it was possible to be.

The churchyard was windy but well-kept, with the gravestones in neat rows, the yew clipped, the paths clear of weeds. I found her at last in a far corner under a young medlar.

HANNAH MARGARET SHALES OF THIS PARISH.

DEPARTED LIFE AUGUST 30, 1724.

AGED 30 YEARS.

WIFE TO THOMAS SHALES, RECTOR.

AND THOMAS, THEIR ONLY SON, AGED TWO WEEKS.

ON THE SAME DAY.

Annie was at my shoulder, plowing her way through the spellings. "No," I said. "No. Oh no."

"Mrs. Aislabie?"

I read the inscription out loud: ". . . And Thomas, their only son, aged two weeks. . . ." Then I turned my head and covered my face with my elbow.

Voices called from across the graveyard: "Is your mistress quite well?"

A couple of elderly women moved across and stared at me. Annie took my arm. "That was a sad affair," one of the women said, nodding toward the grave.

"Knew her, did you?" the other asked.

"We know about her," said Annie. "We are visitors here. Reverend Shales is our rector at home."

"Very fortunate for you. It seemed hard on us that we should lose him as well, but he couldn't bear the place once she'd gone."

"We haven't taken to the new man half as much, though he's very clever," put in her companion. "Rattles away about heaven and h.e.l.l. Our Reverend Shales spoke only of this life. We liked that. And we all wanted him at our sickbed because he had a gift for cheering us up. He talked about all sorts, caterpillars and other bugs even. Nothing was too low for him. But then she died, and the baby, and he wasn't the same."

"How did she die?" said Annie, and this was one of the few questions I ever heard her ask.

"She died of the smallpox. Caught it from the doctor her father insisted be brought from London, though Reverend Shales said the local midwife was good enough for the rest of the village and ought to be for his wife."

"Should have been inoculated," said Annie. "We all was. Our Sir John insisted."

"Ah, but there's the terrible thing. The reverend wanted her to be. He had all the household and anyone else in the village who wanted it inoculated, but Mrs. Shales refused. There were differences between them, and this was one of them. Her father was a cleric, too, very strict and opposed to interfering with the work of G.o.d, which is how he saw the inoculations."

The smaller of the two women was so thin that her neck was stringy as a chicken's, but her eyes were a bright brown. "I remember that time," she said. "Do you remember? A terrible time. We used to see him carry the baby down to the river to show him the swans. It was a warm August, and he thought the sunlight would do the child good. We used to meet him, do you remember, carrying him about so that his sick wife wouldn't hear the child's cries. I'll never forget the sight of that great man with that tiny babe. But it couldn't thrive. Anyone could see that. It was a sickly little thing from the start. And so they were both buried in one grave, and he stood there and prayed over the single coffin. Do you remember?

"We wanted him to stay, but he never got over his grief. He used to go night after night down to the river and never visited us in our homes anymore. He blamed himself for the arguments that had divided them. She hated the work he did with plants and wouldn't be convinced, you see, of the rightness of any modern thing. His sermons got shorter, and sometimes he forgot himself in the middle of a prayer, so in the end he had to go."

Her companion was staring into the distance with her watery blue eyes. "We met him here one evening. I said to him, 'How are you, Reverend?' And he gave me that nice smile of his, but I could tell he was all wrought up. I said, 'I hope you're feeling a little soothed now, Reverend,' and he said a terrible thing. He said, 'I feel as if I shall never be soothed. How could I be? Our child would have lived if we had cared for each other a little more and not been so obstinately set on being right.' I said, 'But you are a good man, one of the best I know, you shouldn't be tormenting yourself,' and he shook my hand and smiled so tender at me and walked away."

"How is he now?" asked the other. "Is he better?"

I didn't answer, so after a moment Annie said, "I'd say yes."