The Alchemist's Daughter (29 page)

“What am I to do, Mistress Aislabie?”

“Surely my husband should answer that question.”

“He said it was up to you.”

I laughed, because this was so exactly what he would say. Her head drooped farther. The ground juddered underfoot. “How long have you been his mistress?”

“Three years. Not anymore.” A tear fell onto her bosom. I was ice and fire. I thought I didn’t care now about my husband, but I did care that on the August day when he stood in the porch all covered with enchantment, when he smiled at me and let his seductive eye linger on my loosened ribbon, he had lately slept with her and had doubtless gone straight back to her.

“I’m surprised my husband is so casual,” I said. “I thought he’d be glad to father anything, even a bastard.”

“He said it was for you to have his child. He said it was a pity you never had one, but that he hadn’t given up hope. He said I should get rid of it.”

“And why didn’t you?”

“I tried. I did my best while you was in the Abbey that time. She ripped me half to pieces, but it wouldn’t budge. She said I’d come to her too late.”

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 grass 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 apron 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 whore.”

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 apron, 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 fucked 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 ]

A
FTER 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 apron, dropped it among the nettles, stuffed my cap into my pocket, and pressed my forehead against the ancient bark.

A baby. An Aislabie bastard. 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, “Hello. Hello,” but nobody answered. The doors on either side of the passageway 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 glass 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 glass. “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 casement.

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 glass 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—Lémery’s
Cours de Chymie
, Le Fèvre’s
Traicte de la Chymie
, Beguin’s
Tyrocinium Chymicum
—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 glass 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 space, 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.