The Alchemist's Daughter (32 page)

The nightmare went on. I found that I did have some strength after all and lashed out at Annie as she plunged me down, but she was stronger than me and in I went, snorting and gasping. Now I was kneeling in one bath while my head and arms were immersed in another. I shivered and ached, but the fire in my legs was put out, that terrible sound of the well bucket scraping on brick came to an end, and Mrs. Gill drew me into her arms and wrapped me in a warm, soft cocoon. I turned my head into her bosom and for the first time smelled something other than ash—essence of Mrs. Gill, herbal, floury. She pushed the wet hair back from my cheek and held the side of my head for a moment.

Then I was lifted by Gill and flung over his shoulder so that all the fires in my flesh were lit again. He took me out of daylight into the dim cottage, then up the narrow staircase, and deposited me on the bed. Mrs. Gill hung me over her arm while Annie unbuttoned the remnants of my gown and cut the ribbon from my neck. I glimpsed it for a moment, a crisp brownish scrap that crumbled in her hand. They lay me out naked, swabbed my skin with ointment, and dropped bitter liquid between my lips. When I stared up at their two faces, one old, one young, I saw such fierce concentration that I thought, I can’t fight them. They are too much for me.

Then the fires came back, and I went hurtling away under the haphazard beams of the cottage roof. Fever turned my bones to dust and jostled the hot coals in my head.

[ 3 ]

W
HEN THE CLOCK
in the nearby church tower struck five, I woke again and tried to remember Shales. I could see the Selden pew under the empty pulpit, my father’s slab, the ruffled grasses on my mother’s grave, but not Shales. I saw grit blown along the aisle, a wasp tap-tapping against the colored glass, and a pot of dead flowers, but no Shales.

Perhaps I moaned. The air above me moved to and fro, and when I looked up Annie’s face was there. She dripped water between my lips and moved a fan that must have been found in one of the old doomed rooms of the manor. I thought the flowers on its papery silk would drop one petal at a time. She sat so close that her knee was against my thigh, and I could hear her labored breathing. Her top lip was drawn up over irregular teeth so that her mouth never quite closed. Occasionally, she paused to swat a fly or give me water. If I could have wept, I would have shed tears at her immeasurable kindness.

Then my fever rose and I streaked flame as I flew through the dark woods gripped in the claws of an owl or crashed down through the branches of the oak tree. Every thought I had was a surprise and always a bad one, so one minute I rummaged through a dung heap and came up with a tangle of baby limbs, arms and legs and clammy trunks, the next I buried my fingers in my husband’s wig and off it came in my hands to reveal another false head of hair more elaborate than the last, and beneath that another and another.

“Marigold oil,” I heard Mrs. Gill say. “It should soothe her. Valerian so she sleeps.”

“. . . poor legs,” said Annie.

“. . . fool. Fortunate to be alive. She deserves . . .”

[ 4 ]

I
WOKE ONE
day to find my head was clear and there were people shouting close by outside the window. At first I was afraid that the ribbon seller would come and abuse me, but then I remembered I was in Mrs. Gill’s bed and therefore safe.

As a child, I used to hide away in this bed when I was lonely during my father’s absence or because I had disgraced myself by breaking a crucible in the laboratory. I was hemmed in on three sides by an alcove, and on the fourth by planks that partitioned the bed from the rest of the room. In a drawer underneath were kept what Mrs. Gill called her precious things: her mother’s wedding ring—paper thin and misshapen, clipped open because they had to cut it off when her finger swelled with arthritis—a lock of my dark baby hair, a paper of dried flowers, “given by him when he came after me,” she had once explained, referring to Gill in an unlikely state of youthful ardor.

I lay between the rough sheets, watched the light seep along the uneven ceiling, and listened to the half-hearted remnants of the fair, the occasional gush of water from the pump nearby, and every quarter of an hour the chime of the bell in the tower of St. M. and St. E.

“How long have I been here?” I asked Mrs. Gill.

“This is the fifth day.”

“I thought I’d die.”

“So you would had it not been for that apron I made you.”

“What damage have I done myself?”

“Your feet and legs are bad up to your thighs. Your hands and face have lost a layer of skin.”

“May I have a mirror?”

“I’ve no mirror.”

“Was much of the house destroyed?”

“Only the laboratory. The rest stands. It’s got good thick walls, that house. A wicked shame to tear them down.”

“Is the work still going on?”

“The work goes on. Lord, Emilie, what were you thinking of?”

A
NNIE SPOONED BROTH
between my lips and plumped the pillow so I could see the sky through the tiny window. “Is the fair still not over?” I asked.

“All but. It drags on forever, it seems.”

“Does everyone know about the explosion?”

“They’ve talked of nothing else for days.”

“Annie, is Reverend Shales come home?”

“Not that I know of.”

I
N THE AFTERNOON
, I woke when the church clock struck five. With each chime, motes of dust throbbed against the window. Then the clock went silent. Mice scratched under the floor, and a couple of birds trod the roof. My heart cracked open.

Shales.

I remembered the hours I had sat in his study and thought I should have stayed there for the rest of my life. Except that Hannah Shales would have been watching me.
For Thomas, on his birthday
is what she had written on the back of her portrait. I thought, What a joy to sit in the morning light and have an artist (even if not a good one) take a likeness. I imagined her poised over a scrap of paper, a thin, tidy woman who would certainly have practiced the inscription many times before writing it out in her neatest hand. Was it just economy with words that made her omit any mention of love? Or was it perhaps that such a word wasn’t needed between a devoted husband and wife? She should have written
with love
, even so. I would have done.

Anyway, what did it matter? Shales had gone, and here was I burned half to death but still dragged along by the silken cord binding me to Aislabie’s embroidered breeches.

W
HEN
M
RS.
G
ILL
came up, I said, “Thank you for healing me.”

She snorted and beat the pillow with her fist. As she turned to go I said, “I found my father’s notebooks under the floor.”

Silence.

“Did they survive the fire?”

Silence.

“Perhaps they were burned. Do you know?”

Silence.

“Mrs. Gill.”

“I thought you’d forgotten,” she said.

“Were they burned?”

“They were not.”

“Where are they?”

She shrugged and went downstairs.

S
O, OF COURSE,
I remember that evening as being the evening of the notebooks. It was one of the hottest of a hot summer, with the air soupy in the confined room and the sky oatmeal-colored in the little window. Annie’s face was blotchy with heat when she brought my supper—they were stewing berries downstairs—and even the birds had stopped singing. My burns itched, so I pulled away the sheets and lay with my flayed legs exposed.

There were times that evening when I was so full of waiting that I had to remind myself to breathe. I knew Mrs. Gill would bring the notebooks. Once set on a course of action, she was an unstoppable force. I had been waiting to read them all my conscious life because what I expected to find, besides a record of my own flawed alchemical progress, was my mother.

[ 5 ]

M
RS.
G
ILL CAME
soon after eight with a flat basket normally used for collecting mushrooms. Inside was the green feather, bright as the day I had picked it up from the bottom of the parrot’s cage, a bundle of letters, a copy of Boerhaave’s
Institutiones et Experimenta Chemiae
and the notebooks, twelve in all, three piles of four.

I slid out the first of the letters. The parchment was brittle, desiccated perhaps by the heat of the flames, and the ink had faded. The creases were so well pressed—in fact, had worn almost transparent in places—that the letter must have been unfolded many times.

December 14, 1725

Dearest Father,

I am writing to you from our new house in Hanover Street. Robert has bought me a parrot, and I thought you would like to see one of its brilliant green feathers.

I have not been able to write until now because I have been ill . . .

I knew that letter about the lost baby by heart. Hadn’t I written it a hundred times in my head before I picked up a pen? I folded it carefully and slid it back into the bundle; each letter a pipingly cheerful record of my marriage to Aislabie, each ending with the same plea:
I miss you, Father. I hope you will write soon . . .

Then the notebooks. I weighed the first in my hand, sniffed. The leather was darkened by the fire and smelled scorched.

Mrs. Gill said, “If he’d wanted you to read them, he wouldn’t have hidden them away so careful.”

“Perhaps.”

“They were private, Emilie.”

“He could have destroyed them. He must have known I’d find them in the end.”

It was already growing dark as I opened the first book at the first page. Mrs. Gill sighed heavily but didn’t go away. Instead, she sat down on the only chair, planted her legs wide, and folded her arms.

C
HAPTER
T
EN

The Emilie Notebooks

[ 1 ]

May 31, 1706

So now I have a daughter named Emilie after her mother. A good name. Looked it up; probably from Amelia, meaning labor.

She is, according to Mrs. Gill, a healthy infant, though I can get little response from her. If I click my fingers, she doesn’t blink; if I smile, she doesn’t smile in return. One promising sign. When I pinched her upper arm, she did cry. She is too young to do much else, said Mrs. G. She is like a new pup, all instinct at present. But give her time.

A girl sent for from north of Buckingham to feed her. Mrs. G. thought it best to avoid someone from the village because of talk. I don’t care, but Mrs. G. says we must bear in mind the baby growing up.

June 1, 1706

The funeral. Reverend Gilbert made a fuss about the graveyard. She was my wife, I said; she’ll be put to rest where I choose. That silenced him. Buried her late in the evening. A decent enough ceremony, given there must have been Catholic blood somewhere in her past. Fine weather. Pondered the inscription for some time. Mrs. G. said the babe should be christened while we were about it, and then I wouldn’t have to go near the church again. Allowed it for the sake of peace and quiet, though hated to hear Gilbert’s talk of original sin. Any fool can see that the infant is without any thought, let alone a sinful or original one.

June 7, 1706

Babe makes slow progress. Hear it crying a good deal, though thankfully not when in the laboratory. The pace of its development puzzles me. Cannot be in proportion to size. Necessity, more like. A calf, for instance, lacking claws or the instinct to attack and with only a lumbering cow to protect it, is on its feet within hours of birth. A kitten, on the other hand, is dependent for some weeks. This human child is utterly helpless, and I confess I am impatient with it, even wonder if I was not too rash in believing I could shape it.

Was I rash? If so, not a common fault in me. In any case, this was not a decision that might have been postponed.

It was the moment when her head fell back on my arm and she slept. I bent my head and sniffed her warm damp breath. That was the moment after which it did not seem to me that I had a choice.

Mrs. G. says it will be six weeks or so before the child will so much as smile.

July 4, 1706

Emilie caught hold of my finger again today, and I laughed at the sudden strength of her. Saw that she was smiling back at me. Distinct light of intelligence in her black eye, and her mouth opened wide with joy. This is not instinct but recognition. Clearly a forward girl, as I suspected. Mrs. G., as noted above, said it would be six weeks before she smiled. This is barely five.

Mrs. Gill was still sitting at the top of the stairs. She had merged into the shadows since I started reading, but I knew that her gaze was fixed on my face.