The Alchemist's Daughter Part 25

She thanked the women, and they told us to send Shales their best wishes. Then we went back to our boat. We were early, so there was time to be on the beach again and look across at the poplars and the swans sailing indifferently by. Annie stood close to my shoulder, and after a while I put my hand through her arm and leaned on her.

The boatman came back full of ale and good cheer. On the way downriver, Annie and I were pressed against each other, and the boatman winked at us and cracked jokes because he said we seemed gloomy, but he gave up after a while, sighed deeply, and pulled strongly on the oars to get us back as fast as possible.

CHAPTER TWELVE.

Aurelie [ 1 ].

THE NEXT MORNING, Annie played the lady's maid and brought a tray of chocolate to my room with a sc.r.a.p of paper scrawled in my husband's hand: Sarah Holborne. Powder Yard. Off Red Lion Street.

I was somewhat suspicious of such a rapid capitulation but wasted no time. Annie sewed twenty guineas into the hem of my petticoat and off we set. The rain had stopped, and the morning was full of stench and steam under a hot sun. As we got farther from the more opulent streets, we linked arms and entered a maze of overhanging walls-old houses deserted by their rich inhabitants and infested instead with street sellers and silk winders living four or five to a room, in cellars and attics or shacks put up in courtyards, in rookeries teetering crookedly in former gardens so that one street led to another, a yard to an alley, an alley to a dead end. And in every bit of open s.p.a.ce, in gutters or gaping windows, Londoners and immigrants fell over each other to earn a penny or two, to get some air, to be anywhere that was not inside the foul buildings where they slept.

The summer warmth heightened the stink, and there were more animals on the streets than in the spring, more country people with their pigs and donkeys, more children too weak to work but not too young to beg. We were jostled like marbles, leered at, pleaded with, cursed, teased, and pushed aside until at last we turned into a lane behind Red Lion Street, where a whiff of gin belched from a distillery hidden in a row of cottages, and then at last we came to a courtyard that was overshadowed by an inner block of temporary dwellings. The bricks were shiny with the recent drizzle, and there was a reek of juniper and raw alcohol, but also the poignant touches of someone taking pride in this once gracious place-geraniums in pots, polished bra.s.s. I thought it a sure sign we had found Sarah, who had such a gift for small things that give a show of elegance.

On the far side of the inner alley was a house three stories high that retained, somewhat chipped, the ornate masonry of its former glory. A woman stood on the step tapping a closed fan against the doorframe and shifting from foot to foot as if she'd been waiting a long time. My heart missed a beat because she was wearing, of all things, my feathered gown, embellished here and there with knots of blue ribbon, patched up at the bodice and skirt, but otherwise much as when I had last worn it in the cellar with Aislabie.

For a moment, a sense of dislocation made me speechless, then I asked for Sarah Holborne. She looked at me as if I was vermin.

"Sarah Holborne," I repeated. "I believe she lives here."

"She might. Why, who sent you?"

Annie breathed in my ear while I stared stupidly. The woman spoke as if to a couple of idiots. "We sent for 'er man Aislabie. Where is 'e?"

"I don't know. But he gave me this address. I'm his wife. May I see her?"

"I doubt it. She took sick. She's in no mood for visitors."

"The baby?"

"The baby is still unborn."

"Please, can I see her? I have come to help."

She stared past my left brow until I produced a shilling, whereupon she came to herself and turned into the house. We followed and found three or four others lolling in the hallway with their skirts pinned up and their bodices cut beneath the bosom. They were dull-eyed and listless, rather like their wealthier counterparts at the tail end of my husband's card party. Draperies covered the doors, and there was a smell of the privy under the fusty scent of s.e.x and perfume. A very young girl with a country bloom on her cheeks darted forward but was pulled away.

The woman at the door had disappeared, so what with the bare nipples and fleshy nymphs disporting themselves in prints on the wall I was hard put to know where to look. The other women stared and whispered behind their hands. I recognized a pair of pink stockings with gold clocks I used to wear before my father died and an embossed silk slipper kicked aside so that its new owner could pick at the skin between her toes. The little country girl had by now been shoved out of sight altogether.

When the feathered woman came back, she had thrown a shawl round her shoulders and her painted features were slack with dismay. "You can come up if you like. She hasn't said you can't because she's past saying anything."

One of the women drew a tearful breath as Annie lodged herself behind my left shoulder and we climbed the creaking stairs. Our guide had hauled her skirts above her knees, exposing veined calves and the whiff of menstrual blood. Up we went to a landing festooned with yet more crimson draperies made from the stuff that had once adorned Selden for my husband's birthday party. From behind a closed door came the slap of flesh and a creak of bedsprings. Our guide slid me a look from under her mouse-skin brows as she led us up another, narrower stairway and opened a door at the top. There, in a sour, airless room, propped against pillows, her hair trim as ever in her little cap but her huge body spilling from the crumpled sheets, was Sarah.

I pushed back my hood and went closer. She was too weak to lift her head, but for a moment we stared at each other. I'm not sure if she recognized me; perhaps I imagined a glint of the old hostility, but after a moment her eyes closed. If I'd met her in the streets, I would have walked past her, she was so unlike herself. Folds of flesh covered her once-delicate wrists, and her face was so swollen that her pointy chin was submerged in her neck.

Annie stepped forward and pressed Sarah's hand. A white patch formed.

The feathered woman said, "She's been like it for weeks. We told her to get a doctor, but she's refused until today. At dawn, she sent me for her man Aislabie."

Trust Aislabie, I thought as I stood helplessly by Sarah's bed. Of course he wouldn't pay for a doctor, so instead he sent me, thereby discharging all responsibility. But I was of no use whatsoever to a sick woman.

Then I realized that Annie had shed her usual air of diffidence and inertia, turned back the bedclothes, exposed Sarah's mountainous belly, laid her hands on it, and put her ear to the navel. Then she replaced the sheet and led me to the door. "I seen this. Mrs. Gill showed me. She will die, and the babe if it's not already dead. She will get so sick that she will have fits and then go into a stupor. She's bound to die."

The strangeness of the house bore down on me-the thumping of bedsprings now reaching its crescendo, the little gathering of silent women in the hall below.

"What can we do?"

"If Mrs. Gill was here, she'd know what to do. Get the baby out." She chewed a flake of dry skin on her lower lip and frowned with concentration.

"Have we time to get Mrs. Gill?"

"I couldn't feel the baby move. We have no time. She will die."

"She's alive now, Annie. We must act. What would Mrs. Gill have done?" I couldn't allow Sarah to die. Harford could engineer a cascade of water, Newton could split light, Harvey could transfuse blood; surely we could prevent a simple death in childbirth. And I wanted not just Sarah's life, but the baby's, too. I wouldn't allow it to be dead. Now that I was within inches of it, I longed for that child.

"Mrs. Gill would bring on the baby," said Annie.

"How?"

"Don't know. Some herb. Something."

"Think, Annie."

"We must get a midwife."

The girl was a genius of Newtonian proportions. We extracted a guinea from my petticoat, summoned the feathered woman, and told her to go with Annie and fetch the best midwife she could find.

Which left me alone with Sarah. The other women stayed downstairs, though I sensed they were watchful and anxious. Perhaps they were afraid of Sarah's state. I certainly was. I had something of the old fear of her superior knowledge-she had entered an experience far beyond what I had ever known-but I was also terrified that she might die on me. Sometimes her body twitched, sometimes she snored or moaned; generally, she was quiet. From below came a yelp of pain, then a scream and a sudden rush of feet and hammering on a door. I thought about my mother and wondered whether she had resembled the blousy feathered woman or the bright-eyed country girl. Sarah stirred and turned her head from side to side while I bathed her face and adjusted her cap because it was unthinkable that her hair should get untidy-though I was cautious, as if she might bite my hand off at any moment.

It was by now late in the afternoon, and still Annie didn't come back. Flies buzzed on the chamber pot and the walls billowed with my stolen clothes-I recognized the wrap-over party gown, the dark blue dress I had worn sometimes as I came out of mourning, and my embroidered petticoats. The sight of those bodices, let out to accommodate Sarah's girth, made me weep, as did a swath of crimson draped on the back of a chair-my ill-fated cloak. I prayed to the G.o.d of Shales, the reasonable G.o.d of the wider picture, the divine architect who had set all in motion, to please to save this girl so that we might make amends. I would have given everything-my own life, I think-to have had the old Sarah back with her trim waist and annihilating shrug.

After two hours more, a midwife came, not unpromising despite her size. The stairs and the summer heat had worn her out, and she sat fanning herself by the closed window while Annie introduced her as Mrs. Jane Calder. There was a faint air of Mrs. Gill about her, certainly competence and a care for her appearance that Sarah would have approved; she wore a clean ap.r.o.n and gown, and her face was kind under a layer of paint. When she'd recovered, she performed the same checks as Annie, whom she seemed to regard as a worthy colleague. Then she went to the door and called out in a voice that must have cut through even the most frantic coupling, "Bring me savin."

"Rue," whispered Annie. "That's what it is. Mrs. Gill will give it to girls sometimes if they're late."

There was, of course, a plentiful supply of that particular drug in the house. A bottle was brought and a spoonful poured between Sarah's lips. Clean water was ordered up, and the midwife washed her hands. "Lord knows what I'm doing here," she muttered. "They're both done for, but at least if we get the baby out we can say we tried." Annie and I were instructed to hold up Sarah's knees while Mrs. Calder greased her hand from a tub of fat and pushed it hard up inside, worked away energetically and gave a sudden stab that made Sarah screech and come wide awake for an instant. A yellowish, bloodstained fluid gushed from the ruptured membranes so suddenly that for a heady moment I thought the baby would follow, ripe and pink and perfect, but instead Sarah gave a deathly moan and woke up again as pain took hold.

We shuttered the windows, ordered candles, clean sheets, and a tray of toast and gin for the midwife, and settled down for a long wait. Annie became a bustling professional; she ma.s.saged Sarah's belly, stroked her hands and wrists, bathed her face, and spooned water between her lips, while Mrs. Calder dozed and ordered more gin and I watched as if just by paying attention I could make a miracle happen.

When at midnight the contractions began in earnest, I wished myself in any h.e.l.l but that. I tried to transpose myself to the woods at Selden or to Shales's quiet study, but I couldn't escape that hot room, which stank of excrement however often we changed the sheets, where the light flickered up the walls and made devilish shadows, where below us men came and went to spend themselves inside some overused woman or another, or, presumably if they had the cash, to pin down the country girl and jab at her tender flesh. Meanwhile, Sarah was roused time and again and flung into a cage of pain so that her eyes flew open in terror and her hands clutched the air. We whispered endearments, stroked and soothed her, but the contractions contorted her into a howling beast whose nails gouged the wall and teeth closed on the pillow as she disappeared into some hideous place where we couldn't reach her until she came panting out, looked into my eyes, and at last recognized me. I saw a most welcome hint of the old hatred, and her lips formed the word "You." Then she lay gasping and sucked on the sponge Annie put to her lips. "Will he come?"

Before I could make up an answer, a distant look came in her eye, and the pain swallowed her up again and tossed her about, and that dreadful cry came from her throat.

This went on until it was bright daylight; then, as the room grew hotter and hotter and the sun shone brighter on the window, Sarah began to fade. Either the contractions slowed or she no longer noticed them. I stared at her face and willed her to survive. Though it was such an unsymmetrical face, as if drawn in a hurry, there was a delicacy in repose that was strangely endearing. I thought that if she woke one last time, she might forgive me.

The midwife had lunged forward and thrust in her hand again. "This is very bad. She's barely opened the womb a couple of inches. We'll let her rest for a while and then give her another dose."

"A doctor?" I said.

She snorted. "You can throw your money away if you like, but he'll be nothing but trouble and expense. This sort of thing has to take its course." Then she went back to her chair and dozed with her hands folded.

Every hour or so a woman peeked in to see how we went on or to bring us tea. All day Annie and I took it in turns to sleep and watch, and it occurred to me as I put my head back on the hard chair, pillowed by the lining of my old cloak, that I had never spent any significant time with women before and that I had no women friends or expectations of women beyond Mrs. Gill, because I had been taught that women were frail and incapable, except for me. And I thought of Sir Isaac inside his crimson-draped coffin, and Aislabie with his grand ambition and greater greed who had masterminded my courtship, the purchase of Flora, and the rebuilding of Selden, and I wondered how they would fare in this room, in the face of a dying woman and her dead baby. In their mechanical universe, in their scheme of things, when it came to this essential matter of birth itself they would be at least as helpless as me. Only Shales would have understood.

Sarah died in the small hours of the following morning. Her breathing had become more labored until she exhaled and simply didn't breathe in again. Then there was a deep silence in the room, like the silence in the laboratory when the fire went out and the clocks stopped.

The midwife leaned forward, listened, and put the back of her hand to the dead mouth. Her other hand fell heavily on Sarah's belly, and she suddenly sprang to her feet and spread her fingers. "Jesus Christ, it's alive."

She dived into her bag, produced a knife, wiped it on her skirt, had Annie bring the candles close, made a swab of Sarah's shift and the soiled sheets, and drew a neat incision with the blade. Then she spread open the lips of the wound and lifted from Sarah's body a curled fetus that seemed to me still and hopeless until she tapped it sharply on the back and breathed in its mouth, whereupon it gave a little cough and then a feeble cry.

Annie fetched a cloth, bundled up the baby, and thrust it into my arms, where it lay with its head thrown back, its tiny mouth gaping and a tuft of hair, dark as my own, sprouting from its little skull. When I kissed its forehead, I smelled new bread and blood. It lunged its head to my breast and mewled again and again until the midwife left her work with the body, picked up my hand, and showed me how to let it suck on my finger. For a moment the baby looked at me with intent, dark eyes, then fell asleep with its mouth latched on so tight I thought it might swallow me whole.

[ 2 ].

MRS. CALDER SAID that for a small fee she could recommend a butcher's wife with a brood of healthy infants who would fill in as a temporary nurse, so I walked up and down the cramped attic corridor jigging the baby against my inexpert shoulder while Mrs. Bess Gardner was fetched.

The baby, who had a remarkable ability to unravel herself from a coc.o.o.n of blankets, astonished me with her urgent needs. Her spasmodic cry twisted my heart, and she nuzzled my chin with her pink mouth. From time to time one of the women came up to offer advice or take a peek, but I wouldn't let them hold her. I thought it might damage her to be transferred from one set of arms to another.

At last Mrs. Gardner arrived, well-scrubbed and agog with curiosity. Annie had cleared the room next to Sarah's and the woman unb.u.t.toned her gown, planted herself on the edge of the bed, spread her knees to receive the baby, pinched her dripping nipple into a teat, and thrust it between the little gums.

I couldn't take my eyes off that child's bobbing head and frantic mouth. My b.r.e.a.s.t.s ached in sympathy when I saw Mrs. Gardner's flesh compressed as the nipple was milked. All that was visible of the baby now was the back of her dark head, while the woman gave me a look of great ease and self-congratulation, as if the baby was lapping away at the heart of her.

IN THE NEXT room, Annie and Mrs. Calder were laying out Sarah's body. When it was done, I went with the other women to stand beside the bed. We were a ragbag: Mrs. Calder, the smartest and most respectable; Annie, as composed as ever, and the rest of us, wild-haired and crumpled. The house was closed for business and the shutters fastened, so the room was very quiet with the racket of London kept at a distance and a pair of candles burning at the head of the bed. Some of the women were weeping; others looked anywhere but at the body. They were restless and uneasy and soon filed out past the little brown-eyed girl who hovered by the door.

Sarah was shrouded in white wool, her swollen hands folded on her breast with a sprig of rosemary between her fingers. I studied her face, which was still puffy but with the neat features clearly visible again, especially the fine arch of her brows and the soft curve at her hairline. The country girl crept forward and put her finger on the shroud. I smiled at her, but she was blind with fear.

I wished that Shales was there so that he could tell me where Sarah had gone because gone she was, completely, with not a hint of her battling spirit left behind. I called to her from the bottom of my soul: Sarah. Sarah. There was no answer. Sarah. The gulf between the living and the dead gaped fathomless in front of me as I looked at her shut eyes and mouth. Another thing you never taught me, Father: that death is the one field of knowledge we can never explore.

After a moment, I went to the door and slipped a guinea into the young girl's hand. I thought it would give her chance to leave if she wanted, but she went on gawping at Sarah as if she couldn't comprehend what had happened to her. So I pushed her toward the head of the stairs and then went back to the baby, who had been expertly swaddled by Mrs. Gardner and now lay fast asleep in a basket. And there I sat, hour after hour, watching over her fiercely and committing myself to the protection of every corpuscle of her being.

MEANWHILE, THE LIFE of the house went on. It was now the afternoon, and occasionally a customer came to the door and got turned away; I heard low voices on the stairs, then the arrival of the undertaker come to measure up. I thought about the country girl and wondered whether she'd escaped with her guinea or if it had been surrendered to the woman in my feathered gown, who now seemed to be in charge.

I told myself that I was in my mother's territory and this is where she perhaps would have felt most at home, and I listened more intently in case something in the house stirred a secret memory. Then I crouched beside the baby's basket, wrapped my arms round my knees, and willed her heart to beat strongly so that the blood might flow through her arteries and carry each new breath of air to her tiny organs and make them grow strong enough for me to take her home to Selden.

[ 3 ].

MRS. CALDER DECREED that the baby would be able to travel when she was a week or ten days old, provided she was well fed on the journey. Annie had a married sister who she thought would nurse the baby once we were at Selden, so I wrote to Mrs. Gill, asking her to prepare for our return. I was troubled by the cost of all this and saw my precious funds drain away in the hiring of the carriage and the paying of Mrs. Gardner, who would have to come with us.

And then there was Sarah's funeral. Her women were ambitious to give her a fitting send-off and seemed to think I had a bottomless purse of guineas. I wrote to Aislabie, care of his club, informing him of his daughter's birth and Sarah's death. I suggested that he might see his way to providing immediate support for one and funds for the other. It was a brief note, somewhat halfhearted because I didn't expect a reply.

GIVEN SARAH'S DISLIKE of churches, the funeral had to be planned with considerable skill and the priest instructed to say the briefest of prayers. We buried her in the evening so that we could carry torches through the dark streets, which the feathered woman said would suit Sarah more than anything. The women, including the young girl who seemed to have gained confidence and status, were sumptuously dressed, mostly in my cast-off or stolen clothes, and wore smart mourning rings engraved with her name. Annie and I followed at a discreet distance, as if Sarah might appear catlike from an alley and hiss us away.

The women were right to choose darkness. Sarah had lived in the shadows. When she hadn't been in the room with me twitching my laces or brushing my hair, I had no idea where she was. The inside of her head had been a foreign country. The glimpse I had of her other life, the house in Powder Yard, was as alien to my own at Selden as Calabar or the Americas. But as I followed her coffin, watched the torchlight flame over its embroidered shroud, saw strange faces spring out of the darkness and fade away again, I knew that she would always be inside me, a gritty reminder of what I might have been.

There was no sign of Aislabie, of course. At Sarah's graveside, I stepped forward and threw in a sheaf of pink roses tied with half a yard of the finest Mechlin lace, in deference to her great skill with the needle. It had been a day of yet more wind and rain, and our skirts were heavy with mud. Rain pattered on the coffin and ran in little channels from the top of the grave. My flowers opened their petals wider to receive the moisture, and it seemed a terrible shame when the first handful of mud thudded down on them. We stood in a tight little bunch and felt the warmth of each other's bodies. Sarah would have fretted over the damage to the fabric of our gowns, taken mine away, and restored it to me later in perfect order. Not once had I thanked her properly for all the little services she had done me.

THE NEXT DAY, we moved the baby to Hanover Street, where the air was cleaner and there was less disruption. It must have been bad for trade in Powder Yard to have a crying baby in the house. Hanover Street had been transformed in the five days since I was last there and was half stripped of its furniture and hangings. One huffy maid had been left in charge of the house, the parrot hung dolefully in a near-empty kitchen, and our feet echoed on the bare staircases. There was no sign at all of Aislabie. I sold my remaining books and instruments to the bookseller near St. Paul's and raised sixty guineas. Given the debt still owed Harford, it seemed a small enough sum.

[ 4 ].

THE MORNING WE left London was gray and drizzly. First into the carriage went Mrs. Gardner, next the parrot, then Annie. The baby, lovingly dressed in the tiny bonnet, gown, and shawl that used to be at the bottom of my mother's chest, was tucked up in a basket. I was about to hand her to Annie when a familiar figure came swinging round the corner of the street, waved a gloved hand as if astonished to find us there, and quickened his pace.

I realized that my husband's arrival was impeccably timed. As usual, Aislabie had paid minute attention to sartorial detail and had achieved a look of charming, somewhat nautical dishevelment-a blue morning coat draped at the waist with a scarlet sash, matching satin slippers, a bob wig, and a loosely tied neckcloth. He bowed over my hand, but his gaze slid down to the baby. "A word with your old man, Em, before you go?"

I brought the basket back inside, and we went into the former dining parlor, now empty of every stick of furniture except the table, which was presumably too badly marked with tobacco and drink stains to be of any value to the bailiffs. We stood on either side of the dirty window, looking out at the street and the waiting carriage. Aislabie was very ill at ease, c.h.i.n.king the change in his pocket and darting anxious looks into the basket on the table, as if at any moment his daughter might reach out clingy tentacles and wrap them round his throat.

"Flora sails tomorrow," he said.

I nodded.

"Ain't you going to wish us well?"

"I have no idea what to wish for that ship. I can't help feeling it would be better if she went down with all hands before she reached her destination."

"That's very ungrateful of you considering all I've done to fit her out. And your well-being depends on her, remember, like all the rest of us."

"I want nothing to do with Flora. She will be trading in human misery. My father once said that if you dissect two dogs-one black, one white-they will both be the same under the skin. I have thought about it a great deal since visiting Flora, and I believe it must be the same with humans. And in any case, the chances of anyone coming home safely from such a voyage seem remarkably slim. I've seen her and heard about the type of combustible cargo she'll be carrying."

His blue eyes flickered. "There are risks, but nothing out of the ordinary. And at least I'll be living. I'll see the other side of the planet. I've had enough of this little corner of it. London confines me, shrinks me down. Anyway, you've no choice but to take an interest, Emilie, since every last penny we have is invested in Flora. As well as half of Selden."

"What do you mean?"

"Fitting out a ship is an expensive operation. I had to mortgage land to raise the funds." He drifted across to the basket and peered at the child's face. Then he touched her forehead with the back of his index finger. I nearly cried out in fear, "She's not yours. Don't claim her now."

When he looked up, his eyes were moist. "Does she have a name?"

"She does."

"Well?" He touched her again on the ear.

"We called her Aurelie Sarah. Aurelie because she arrived with the dawn. It comes from the Latin word for gold. And because it's a French name, after my mother."

"Aurelie." He nodded approvingly. "Aurelie."

"So I hope you've found some means to support her," I said coldly, "if not even Selden is safe from your creditors anymore."

He leaned back on the table, crossed his legs, and produced an envelope and a folded paper from his pocket. "I sold a picture for you. Broke my heart, but it raised nearly a hundred pounds. I've brought you fifty. And then there's this. Your father was a wily old sorcerer. He wanted a clause in the marriage settlement in case I died or abandoned you and left you short of money. Seventy pounds a year. So there you are. A little nest egg in the event of my not coming back." His attention wandered to Aurelie again. "She's got a good face, I think. She'll be a beauty. You take care of her, Emilie."

The amazing thing was there was so little self-knowledge in the man that he truly believed in the veracity of each moment. When he took my hand and pressed it to his lips, I think he really did feel every inch a brave seafarer setting out on a hazardous voyage for the sake of his wife and child. And the touch of his fingers, which were clammy, convinced me that he actually was afraid. "Give me your blessing, Em. Wish me well."

I was silent.

He threw back his head and gave me that sliding look down his cheek that used to make me tremble with desire. "Dear G.o.d, you're a cruel woman."

I took the papers he'd placed on the table, picked up Aurelie, and went out to the carriage. Aislabie sprang ahead to help me in and dabbed Aurelie's forehead with his thumb, as if in benediction.