A LADY FOUND
FROM THE MEMOIRS OF PROFESSOR JAMES MORIARTY:
O
ut of the darkness, she appeared: Susanna was her name. I did not know that then, of course, though she is now emblazoned on my mind, and I cannot think of her as anything but Susanna.
She arrived on George Yard with the slatternly tread of a streetwalker—a saunter that began at her high heels and propagated itself to the peak of her head. And Susanna not only walked like a woman of ill repute: She looked like one. She was dressed in a red-tiered skirt trimmed in black lace and a low bodice that displayed her bosoms like a pair of apples. Her face was painted as thickly as an actor’s. And she smoked.
How could this be any kind of transcendent creature?
But she didn’t solicit. She paid no heed to the men who shouldered past her down the pavement, nor to the women who hissed as they went by. Instead, Susanna stood with her head tilted back and stared up into the sooty heavens. I followed her gaze.
The night was starless, moonless, black beyond the reach of the street lamps. The sky was as dark as the descending boot of God. But staring up into that abyss, Susanna smiled.
What could she be seeing?
Hope tingled through me. This was my last chance. I could not forgive myself if I let a hansom roll up and the
door swing wide and the girl glide in and vanish forever. Turning from the window, I grabbed my coat and raced out the door and down the stairs and onto George Yard and dodged among hurtling cabs. The other folk on the sidewalk parted before me, and I ran to her and skidded to a halt. I didn’t know what to say, but it didn’t matter: She took no notice of me.
My eyes flashed from her painted face—dramatic like a Kabuki mask—to the black sky overhead. “What … what are you looking at?”
She didn’t move, as if she were unaware of my presence—or were very aware. “The snow.”
The sky was pure black. “What snow?”
Instead of answering, Susanna sent a thin jet of breath purling up from her lips. It floated into the air, formed a small cloud, and then began to sparkle. Next moment, tiny snowflakes cascaded down to settle on her face. They shimmered there for the briefest instant before melting and sinking into her skin.
There itwas: transfiguration. Herbreath became snowflakes. Some man had tarted her up in this costume and had troweled makeup onto her face and had booted her into the street where her lips were meant to pucker for men, and yet she saved them to kiss the black sky.
I doffed my coat and whirled it out like a cape and wrapped Susanna in it. She breathed deeply, drawing my scent into her lungs, then sent the essence of me into the air to freeze and sparkle. Her shoulders spread within my coat. Still, she had not looked at me.
“Come back with me,” I urged her, “to my room.”
Before she could answer, a man and wife, buttoned up against the cold, waltzed past, arm in arm. The man sneered at us: “The fellow and the slut.”
I stared defiantly after them. “Announcing yourself, guvnor?”
The man—a foot taller than I and twice my weight—stopped in his tracks and pivoted smartly about, his brass-headed cane hoisted in one hand.
I flashed him a fearless smile: “Let’s go, then.”
His fat face twitched, and he tried to affect an imperious air: “Yes, young man. Do—go!”
My feet were planted on the pavement, and my smile only grew.
He and his wife pivoted again and strode rapidly away. At intervals, the man glanced back at me until he and his wife had disappeared beyond Bucks Row.
I turned to the young woman and saw that her face was still lifted to the sky, still wet with melted snowflakes. “Come back with me, to my room.”
Only then did I realize she wasn’t looking at the sky. She was looking at me. And it wasn’t snowflakes that wet her cheeks. “It’s like you fell from heaven.”
“I did.” I raised my elbow toward her. She lifted her hand from within my coat and set her slender fingers on my forearm. With the lady at my side, I turned and set off down the pavement. “And where did
you
fall from?”
She blinked, drawing a deep breath. “No great distance.”
We said little else, she and I, as we strolled along the shopfronts and wended our way past parked cabs and dashed among rolling ones. On the other side of George Yard, I opened the door of the boardinghouse and gestured her within. She climbed the narrow stairs past the flickering gaslight, and I guided her to the wide-open door of my rooms. Glancing within, I suddenly noticed how dismal the place looked.
“Forgive the squalor,” I said.
“It’s nice,” she answered, entering. Then, in a different voice, she said, “I’m supposed to ask to see the money.”
I laughed, closed the door behind us, and slid the coat off her shoulders. “Why? Are you a burglar?”
“The money’s supposed to be on the dresser before anything happens.”
“Who says?”
“My fath—my … manager.”
I drew her to a settee and compelled her to sit down. Then I knelt before her and held her hands. “Your father sends you out?”
Her face trembled behind the cracked paint. “I’m supposed to see the money.”
“All right.” I dug into my pocket, dragged out my last five sovereigns, and smacked them into her palm. “There. Will that be enough?” She tried to slide three sovereigns back to me, but I wouldn’t take them. “Your father sends you out?”
“I got eight sisters to support—”
“Isn’t that your father’s job?”
She shrugged. “This is what he does—”
“What about your mother?”
“Mother?”
I blinked impatiently at her. “You have eight sisters.”
“None of us have a mother.”
“Well, where did you come from?”
“The orphanage,” she said, prying her hands out of mine.
I sat back on my heels, understanding at last. “You’re all orphans?”
“A family, now. Some are older. They’re kind of like our mothers. But you don’t get too attached to any of them. They don’t last long. Just Father does.”
“Just Father does …” I echoed, thinking this through. My heart felt small and cold. “Listen—do you love this man?”
“What?”
“Do you love your father?”
“No,” she said, her eyebrows furrowing. “But he’s …
Father
.”
I gently reached to her, taking her hand again in mine. “I don’t have much money—just those five sovereigns until I return to Cambridge—”
“Cambridge!”
“Yes, and there, I have a monthly stipend from
my
father—enough for both of us to live and eat.”
“What are you saying?”
“Come with me.”
“What?”
“Come live with me.”
“For sex?”
“No. Not for sex. For life. For learning.”
She shook her head miserably. “I can’t read.”
“I’ll teach you.”
She was beginning to weep. “You don’t even know my name.”
I smiled fearlessly. “What’s your name?”
“Susanna,” she said in surrender. “Susanna Peshwick.”
“Pleased to meet you, Susanna Peshwick.” I kissed the back of her hand. “My name is James Moriarty.”
She was crying. “Why? Why would you do this?”
I reached up to catch her tear on the tip of my thumb. “Because … because …” What was I to say? I was doing this because of the third tone, that strange, transformative tone? For a moment, I feared she wouldn’t understand, but then I remembered the snowflakes on her face. “It’s because of the snowflakes,” I said at last, tilting my head back and pursing my lips and letting breath roll into the air.
Susanna watched me, and the tears stopped coming, and a slow smile cracked the makeup she wore.
THAT NIGHT, I washed Susanna’s face and shared with her the last of the cheese and bread I had. She slept in the bed, and I slept on the settee. Next morning, we went together to the train station, and we bought two tickets to Cambridge and arrived to set up house together in my apartments.
I sold a few books from my freshman studies and bought Susanna some new clothes. Otherwise we lived off the money from Father—and the few extra sovereigns I could earn per month by tutoring. Susanna was my main student, though—and my best. She had never learned to read or write, but within a month, she had grasped the basics of letters and words. In two, she could follow along as I read from Milton and Newton. More than letters, though, she had a natural genius for numbers and chemistry.
In one of our first projects together, we worked out the geometry of snowflakes. Beginning with two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom, we mapped the possible molecular combinations and settled on the most stable structure. Then, we modeled that structure in clay and quills and played with the little forms until we discovered the manifold ways that these tiny pieces could fit together. All were hexametric—six sided.
I wrote up our results in a monograph, and Susanna provided illustrations. We published
The Molecular Basis of Snowflake Formation
, by James Moriarty and Susanna Peshwick—and it remains the authoritative document on the subject.
How prophetic those first snowflakes had been.
And so it went with us. I taught her what I was learning,
and Susanna joined me in research and experimentation. We published our findings together, and I soon came to be known as the heir apparent to the seat of Newton. Susanna came to be known as my brilliant and mysterious and beautiful mistress. It was, of course, unfair that she should be eclipsed by me, though I hoped she would be content enough until I could secure a position and pay for her own schooling.
I had just begun my final year, though, when I realized Susanna was not content. The sweet serenity had drained from her face, and she always wore a look of severe focus. I did what I could—placed her name first on our next monograph, encouraged her to conduct her own research, but nothing could bring back her joy.
At last, I guided her to a chair beside our apartment window, knelt before her as I had on that first night, and begged to know: “Susanna, what have I done?”
She looked quizzically at me. “What do you mean?”
“I’ve tried to be true to my pledge—food and clothing and shelter, learning, life—”
She nodded. “You have been true.”
“I’ve never required anything of you except that.”
Her eyes began to tear. “Yes. You have never required anything of me—”
“What is it, then? What have I done?”
Susanna blinked. “I
want
you to require something more.” She stood, still holding my hand, and led me to the bed. I had, of course, wished for this moment from the start, but my oath as a gentleman had bound me. Susanna unbound me.
I found a new course of study that year. While I earned a first in maths and physics, I learned even more about the body and heart of a woman. And just after I had accepted a fellowship at Jesus College, Susanna educated me in a new mathematics—that of trimesters.
“You’re pregnant?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said gently.
I looked about at that apartment we had shared for a year and a half, and I tried to imagine where we would put a crib. “We’ll need a bigger place.”
Susanna smiled at me. “We’ll need a bigger life.”
She was right. No longer would it be just the two of us against the world, but now three. No longer could we stroll hand in hand across Jesus Green, but now would have a pram bumping along between us. I felt grieved. Our new life together would come to an end, and an altogether different life would begin.
“I suppose I’ll have to marry you,” I murmured, thinking aloud.
The smile melted from her face, and she said, “For a mathematical genius, you certainly are an idiot.”
I stared at her. “I won’t have to marry you?”
“No,” she replied, taking my hand. “You will, but—but what sort of man proposes by saying ‘I suppose I’ll have to marry you’?”
Of course, she was right. I was a fool—and I nearly compounded the problem by apologizing. Instead, I knelt before her, looked her in the eye, and said, “Susanna Peshwick, will you marry me?”
“I suppose I’ll have to.”
WE WERE married on the Bridge of Sighs in St. John’s College, a small ceremony with the rector and two colleagues as witnesses. There, in the sight of God, we were joined in holy matrimony till death us do part.
Despite her pregnancy, Susanna began her formal studies that very term. Her classmates were appalled that a woman—that a
pregnant
woman—should be among them. They became
even more appalled as they discovered how very much she knew and how rapid her thought processes were. Jabbering tongues were silenced in the first few weeks of her time among them, replaced by gaping mouths and then by smiles. Soon, a number of the fellows were asking for her help with assignments, and a few even had designs that went beyond that—until I disabused them of their youthful ambitions.