The Alchemist's Daughter Part 18

"She's a wh.o.r.e."

"Did you ever think why she lives like this? Did you ever ask her?"

"No. Why should I? She was scarcely forthcoming."

"Dear G.o.d, it's uncanny how he trained you up in his likeness. I have never known anyone as ignorant of life beyond the laboratory as that man. Or as incurious."

"He had a great deal on his mind."

"He was mighty choosy about what he thought about. Same as you."

"What has this to do with Sarah?"

"Good Lord, Emilie, you had only to look at her to know what a state she was in. She was sick with misery, apart from anything else. It was a wickedness to bring her away from London in the first place. I don't think she slept for the first month."

"Sarah is tough. She'll survive. She stole my clothes."

"She came to us beside herself and said you had been hard. Gill took her up the lane in the trap, and she caught the stage at dawn. If he hadn't agreed, she would have dragged her boxes up there herself. We helped her."

"She could be hanged," I said.

"She had nothing, worse than nothing." The blacksmith's boy reemerged with a rusty hod and began shoveling bits of slack from a heap in the corner of the yard. She waited until he'd gone back into the forge. "I noticed way back what was up with her, but she would have nothing to do with me. Then at last she came to me and said she was in trouble. I said, 'How much trouble?' She said four months. I took another look and thought seven, more like. When she let me touch her, I found out what had gone on while she went to London with you. She's lucky to have lived this long. She must have been well past four months when they tried to get rid of it."

"I had no idea. I didn't know."

"You mean you chose not to see. You asked no questions."

"But why would I? She was so cold with me."

"That girl told me that she was apprenticed to a petticoat maker at three, and by seven she'd been sent to run errands at the great houses. Then one day a couple of footmen got friendly with her, plied her with cakes, plucked her off her feet, and took her to some place called Stonecutter's Yard-that name sticks in my head, I find-Stonecutter's Yard, where there was an empty attic with bird muck on the floor, and they took it in turns to cover her mouth and hold her by the hair while the other had her till she was awash with blood and tears. Afterward, she couldn't walk, so one of them carried her back to her mistress and said he'd found her like that, and they paid over some money so the woman wouldn't go to the magistrate. Instead, she st.i.tched her up and said Sarah was on the road to a much better career than she could offer, if she so wanted. But Sarah wouldn't speak or work, so after a while she was released onto the streets, and she got work with a dressmaker and was sent as a model for the gowns to entice great ladies to buy, and soon she had gentlemen sniffing round her. She was careful and gave herself only to the richest, and in time she had her own house and her own girls to manage, but she never smiled or kissed until Aislabie came. She was known for it. So now she has gone back to London, and she will have that child all unprotected by anyone who cares for her, and it will be a terrible birth."

From inside the forge came the sc.r.a.pe of ashes and the rattle of coal. Next the boy applied the bellows-little puffs at first, then, as the charcoal began to glow, long, wheezing gasps. Rusty horseshoes were piled round the edge of the yard, along with bits of iron, cartwheels, spades, and pickaxes.

I visited here with Aislabie, I remembered, dressed in silk, my hand tucked under his arm. There was heat enough in the forge that day to make an iron horseshoe flexible as clay. "She won't be dest.i.tute," I said, watching the first little flames dart blue and yellow. "Those gowns are worth a lot of money."

"I have had many girls like her at my door over the years. Believe me, that infant will die one way or another. The mother, too, most like. And you could have saved them. You could have made one good thing out of this unholy mess."

But I wasn't listening anymore. I drew breath and stood up. The yard spun round, but I headed for the door to the forge. Inside, the air was dense with smoke. The boy added bits of coal one by one as fresh flames darted up from the new fire.

I was drawn to those flames as if I had been a moth. Somewhere deep inside me I felt release.

I took another step.

The sign of fire. There it was. Lapping flames, fierce at heart.

Beautiful fire. Pure as water.

The sign of fire.

CHAPTER NINE.

Fire and Air [1].

MRS. GILL WALKED back with me to Selden as far as the gates, pushed me through, and shut them firmly after me. The ground shook with the pounding and cras.h.i.+ng on the far side of the house. My head was full of red noise, but I was very clear about what to do next.

Once inside the laboratory, I tied on my canvas ap.r.o.n and began the ritual of preparation. I was in a tunnel and saw only the c.h.i.n.k of light at the far end as I shuffled half-packed crates through to the library and locked the two doors behind me. I wrapped gla.s.s vessels and the delicate scales in bits of cloth and linen, boxed them up and carried them down to the cellar, cleaned the workbenches, and swept the floor. Then I lit a candle and closed the last shutter. The dead rose stood in its gla.s.s on the window seat, head hanging. I gave it a tap. Be patient. Just a little longer.

My father's notebook suggested that a pinch or at most a salt spoon of saltpeter was sufficient, but I would be content with nothing less than conflagration. I'd had enough of caution and pain and slow revelation. I climbed on a stool, took down a full jar, perhaps a pound and a half of the stuff, and placed it on the workbench.

Then I sat at my father's desk with his staff in one hand and my mother's pink ribbon in the other. I looked at the furnace, the cloudy gla.s.s vessel, the pool of distillate, the rose on the windowsill, and the alchemical notebooks. I felt no regret for what I was about to do, only a kind of weariness that I must pa.s.s through the next few minutes.

The only item in all the room that I would miss, I decided, was my mother's ribbon. Only that. I stroked it gently and then hooked it carefully round my neck so I could take it with me. I thought of her peaceful plot in the shady churchyard. Perhaps I would be allowed to lie with her. Surely Shales would take pity on me to that extent.

My head emptied itself of prayers and incantations. Instead, I remembered how I had walked down the brick steps to the hot garden and found the rose hidden among the leaves with one drop of dew on its pink petal.

I got up, took a knife, and chipped away at the seal joining the receiving flask to the distillation tube. Once they were separated, my clammy hands put the neck of the jar of saltpeter to the receiver. My heart thudded. I was committed. The jar tilted and the white powder began its slide downward. Then one vessel was vertical over the other and the saltpeter was plunging into the distillate. I saw the rose again, deep pink among its inverted crown of sepals. I remembered that Shales had once been in the laboratory and that he had stroked my neck.

The explosion turned me over and over until I was a ball of fire gathering heat. Somewhere in my white center there was a tiny conscious part of me, but the rest was flame and I was consuming the air. Lightning crackled across the workbench, and my head banged against the edge of my father's desk. My spine hit the floor, and the breath was knocked out of my lungs.

I lay smoldering under the desk, cradled by charred floorboards, and my hands shriveled like leaves in a bonfire. Flames lapped at my feet. I was wearing-I had been wearing-a cotton dress under my ap.r.o.n. Just a matter of waiting, I thought. The air is trapped in my gown. Fire and air, the perfect combination. I will flare up like paper. Why does paper burn so freely? Because it is insubstantial, because it is full of phlogiston, because it is made of wood, and wood . . . And wood and paper . . .

The light again, and another echoing boom in my ears. I lay in dappled shadow under the apple tree, and my legs spread wider, wider.

The light. I tossed my head and fire ripped across my cheeks and into my eyes like the bodkin Newton had used to distort the shape of his eyeball. I saw my father sink in his chair and let his old head drop into his hand. I saw his staff roll on the floor.

The jagged light exploded again in my head. The dung heap. Sarah's knowing eyes in the dark of the furnace shed. A spillage of red silk.

Shales, who wasn't coming back.

Alchemy deals with opposites. It is concerned with the marriage of pairs: air and earth, sun and moon, male and female. A brace of babies. My husband, my maid.

Gla.s.s smashed, and there was a sudden draft. The room burned brighter-a fresh dispersal of light, as the witless little Wepfer would have put it.

Overhead there was a tearing and cras.h.i.+ng as old brackets collapsed under shelves and gla.s.s tumbled down. A beam was on fire; I saw a frill of flame on either side, and I thought that the ceiling would fall on top of me, followed by the Queen's Room itself, bed included. The air should have been full of phlogiston, but I could breathe quite easily. A shutter burst open and a fragment of burning wood fell onto the workbench above me. My father's notebook caught fire; brilliant flames licked the pages until one floated free of the workbench, down, down to the hem of my skirt. There was banging on the cellar and library doors, voices.

My ankle was burning. I heard a yelp that was my voice. A ruffle of orange spread along the edge of my ap.r.o.n.

I watched the flames. They were beautiful, irregular, eager, and pure. They yearned up and up to the air and climbed toward me round the edge of my ap.r.o.n. Another gust of air wafted from the window and the flames burned brighter still, and the pain was so intense I felt my stomach turn to water. I thought, It is the air, it is the air that the fire needs, and whatever is in the air is also in my skirts and in niter and gunpowder.

And then I turned my head to one side and saw something so amazing that I rolled over and began to drag myself toward it, though in doing so I crushed the flames and pain seared along my legs and knocked my breath away. There was a green feather floating above a dark s.p.a.ce where before there used to be floorboards. The fire crawled up my arms and thighs, but I scarcely noticed as I picked up the feather and peered into the hole. I saw a bundle of letters tied up in a piece of the red tape my father used to bind his papers. And under the letters, deep in a cavity in the floor, a book, and notebooks bundled together, leather bound, the first one labeled in my father's youthful hand: Emilie Selden The Alchemist's Daughter I covered the cavity with my body and thought, I'd like to read those notebooks if I have a moment, but the next breath I took was fire. I gasped, and my mouth was dry heat; and I gasped again, but this time my throat closed up and my lungs ached and heaved, and I tried to open my mouth but my head was black and I knew it would burst apart, blood, tissue, bone.

Then I was tumbling into the dark s.p.a.ce among my father's notebooks, the pain and panic fell away, and I was a comet rolling in the velvety vacuum of s.p.a.ce.

[ 2 ].

THERE WAS A high-pitched whining in my ears and, from far away, Gill's voice: "Wait till she gets here. Never touch her until then." I felt the boards move under his weight, and the next moment I forgot about him.

My legs were on fire. I cried out, but no sound came. I tried to lick my lips but had no tongue. A weight pressed on my back so I couldn't move.

I thought I must have died and soon would enter my mother's world, the silent, cold-fingered world of the dead. I yearned for the underside of fallen leaves, damp, peaty.

Voices again. Harford, was it? ". . . have put a stop to this."

I thought my eyelids had been burned open, but all I could see was the domed shape of my skull and the blood pumping across the vessels of my inner eye. I smelled the excited chemical scent of combustion.

". . . not safe. Keep the men . . ."

". . . another set of explosions . . . combustible materials . . . close the . . ."

They faded into the fire. I thought, in a rage of pain, Why don't they put out the flames? My legs are still on fire. Haven't they noticed?

Then more bustle, another s.h.i.+fting on the boards, the soft pressure of a body against mine. Liquid fell into my eyes, and the weight was lifted from my back. I saw a blackened hand lying near my face. Something cold damped down the fire in my legs.

"You did well." Mrs. Gill. She can't have been talking to me or Gill. She never praised us.

I was lifted up, and the pain made me croak. Gill held me at arm's length with my head and arms flung back, supported by Annie on one side, Mrs. Gill on the other. I saw everything upside down-the entrance hall, Annie's nostrils, an open door, the sudden dazzle of sunlight, gra.s.s. As the air touched me, pain shot through my legs and sucked away my vision. Blackness again. Then a garden wall, the softness of a blanket. Ah, good, I thought. Here I'll sleep.

"Deep breath, Emilie." Then Mrs. Gill took me by the hair and thrust my face down in a tub of ice-cold water. My world went effervescent blue and gray and red, and I was wide awake. Alive. Water streamed across my eyes, and I opened my mouth to shriek No, but she hooked me up and plunged in my arms and shoulders, too. Down I went, and water gushed to the back of my mouth and made me choke. When she brought me up, I heard her say, "Breathe, Emilie, deep breath. Now." There was time to notice a rattle of a chain and a clang of metal on brick as the well bucket hit the sides, and then I went under again. Fire and water, water and fire; somebody, who is it, the German, Stahl, says that water is necessary to combustion. We were going to test . . . We must find out why water . . . I could make notes . . .

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 s.h.i.+vered and ached, but the fire in my legs was put out, that terrible sound of the well bucket sc.r.a.ping on brick came to an end, and Mrs. Gill drew me into her arms and wrapped me in a warm, soft coc.o.o.n. 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 unb.u.t.toned the remnants of my gown and cut the ribbon from my neck. I glimpsed it for a moment, a crisp brownish sc.r.a.p 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 ].

WHEN 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 gra.s.ses on my mother's grave, but not Shales. I saw grit blown along the aisle, a wasp tap-tapping against the colored gla.s.s, 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 part.i.tioned 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 ap.r.o.n 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?"

ANNIE 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."

IN 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 sc.r.a.p 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.

WHEN MRS. GILL came up, I said, "Thank you for healing me."