The Alchemist's Daughter Part 20

N.B. Will make inquiries into cost of some such trip when next in town.

When later we went walking in the woods, she remarked how the engraver of the von Guericke experiment had chosen to watch from the shade so that he was in darkness and the amazing events with the copper hemispheres in the light. Astounds me with what she sees. Wonder if this tendency to think tangentially is common to other females, or whether it is something she perhaps inherited from her mother.

Picked up a fistful of dead leaves and made her smell the peat while we waited to see if a deer might come. All the time I watched her face. I see traces of her mother, yes, in her wide forehead and the shape of her ears, but my Emilie is so fine, so quick, so unlike anyone in the world except herself.

September 19, 1721 Back from London with the pus in a phial ready to engraft onto my dear child. She has grown while I was away and is more graceful. Her figure is almost a woman's. In London, I took the opportunity to study other women, and none is as marvelous as she. None can talk as she does about the quality of air and fire. None has such clear white skin or such black eyes sparking with intelligence.

She wanted to know everything that I had done and seen, but I was sharp with her and sent her early to bed. Cannot bear to see her so healthy, knowing what I must do. My misgivings give me great pain. Have seen the evidence with my own eyes. All but one of those felons inoculated with the disease survived, and it's not clear whether he died of smallpox or some other infection, but in this one case I mistrust the experimental method. It is not proof enough.

Am therefore in a terrible quandary. If I should be mistaken, it may cost her life. I consider other errors I have made, as when in 1689 we blew the chimney off the large furnace shed, or when a delegation from the village came to complain about the smell when we failed to achieve the correct temperature for the making of phosphorus. These were unfortunate only, but this projected experiment with the smallpox could be fatal. And if I don't engraft her, she is also at risk. London is full of smallpox. There are cases in Buckingham. It will very likely come to Selden again.

September 20, 1721 This morning I engrafted her. Took her round, bare arm, sc.r.a.ped a little gash in her skin, and dropped in the pus. She scarcely flinched, but watched my face intently. Her eyes watered when I made the wound, but she didn't say a word. Trusted me. We had earlier revised Harvey's work on the circulation of the blood, and I described in detail the experience of the convicts. After an hour or so she seemed to have forgotten what had happened. Kept her beside me constantly and checked that the wound has not become infected, but she has gone to bed in good health.

September 25, 1721 These days are the worst I have ever lived. Watch her all the time. Am often angry with her for no other reason than that my worry is taking all my attention. Every time she puts her hand to her head I think she is sickening. Have asked Mrs. Gill to keep a record of what she eats, her excretions, her patterns of sleep. All seem normal.

September 27, 1721 The critical time. She seems distracted. Perhaps she is worried, too, though she says not a word, my brave soul. To take her mind off the engrafting, I told her that today we should release the owl. Gill has been pressing me for the last week to let it go, but Emilie has grown fond of it, and I saw no harm in keeping it confined a little longer. And we have begun work on phlogiston. Can hardly bear to see her so eager when at the back of my mind is the knowledge that I may have killed her. When we were together this afternoon, she seemed dull. I thought it was the illness coming upon her and was very sharp. She is better this evening. There are times when the worry of this girl is such that I wish she had never been born.

Tonight took the owl to the roof. Not once did she flinch as we watched it fly away, though I knew she had grown attached to it. Lapsed and held her by the arm. Could feel her warm, breathing body next to my hand and I thought, There, there, she is so strong, nothing can harm her. She will be well.

October 1, 1721 Emilie has eight spots, four out of sight, but she tells me they are on her chest, belly, and hip, two on the back of her left knee, another on the crook of her elbow, another on her wrist. Definitely smallpox, and I watch the most visible, on her wrist, all the time. Will not let her scratch it. This morning in the laboratory she complained of dizziness. Would not let her out of my sight, even though she asked to be allowed to lie down. Would not let her lie down. Have a dread of her not getting up again. This evening she seemed tired but a little better.

October 3, 1721 Danger is past. Have never lived through such in my life. Nor hope to again.

[ 4 ].

BY NOW THE fair had ended, and the village street beyond my room was quiet except for the occasional flurry of conversation, the movement of sheep or goats, the squabble of hens, and the insistent striking of the clock. Meanwhile, they were still bottling fruit in the kitchen, and I was half stifled by the smell of boiled sugar.

My days in the attic room were numbered. I could get out of bed on my own now and walk a few steps. Mrs. Gill said so much enclosure was bad for me and I should be out in the air, but I wouldn't leave the house. I was afraid of getting better and being sent back to Selden because of what I might find there. Besides, I had grown attached to the attic room and to being so near other human beings in the village. The ability of people to rub against each other in ways different to those that had operated at Selden and in the Hanover Street house intrigued me. Mention of anyone except me was rare in my father's notebooks, and it struck me that this exclusivity had made me singularly unfit for other less-devoted men-notably Aislabie. My father had brought me up to expect that pairs of people should be everything to each other. No wonder I had found it so bewildering when Aislabie went sauntering off each day to spend time with people who weren't me.

And then I came across a name in my father's eleventh notebook that put Aislabie out of my head completely.

February 12, 1725 Banished Shales. Fool that I am-didn't see the danger. Regarded him merely as a colleague, but when he came into the library sensed a withdrawing of her attention from me to him. Twice he suggested that she might visit his laboratory.

When he and I were witnesses to the experiment with smallpox, he had seemed sober and reserved. But with Emilie he was different, and she became unlike herself. Her pupils widened, her mouth opened, there was color in her cheeks.

I know that some male animals, once they have lost their partners-swans, for instance-can, after a period of grief, be predatory.

After he'd gone, she was withdrawn. Fortunately, he proved to be duller than I expected. Was mistaken in him. There is no reason for him to come here again.

So have banished him. This is what comes of attempting to include others in alchemy. In any case, acted partly out of pride-had a peculiar idea that I should try and convince Shales.

Told Mrs. Gill he was not to be allowed in the house. Said I cannot have that girl's head turned by any male who walks in here, and we'll have no more trips to the village. She was very sharp with me. Said I was a fool to myself, that if I sheltered Emilie she was bound to be vulnerable to the first young man who came and made eyes at her. Said she is like the young of any species and bound to seek a mate. I argued that this was instinct, not intellect, and my Emilie is pure intellect, at which Mrs. Gill shouted at me and said, "You must give some thought for the girl's future, sir, we none of us will be here forever, and then what? You have left her without defenses. What good will all her learning be if she is alone?" Ordered her away. Have never known her so insolent.

Since then have done nothing but ponder the problem of Emilie's future. There is the palingenesis to be sure, but I cannot rely on it. Wish I could. She will have Selden, but I don't like to think of her alone here, as I was alone. But what is the answer? I won't have her marry. Who is worthy of her?

March 6, 1725 Well. Well. So I shall take the following steps, and I have come to this decision reluctantly and after many hours of thought. From henceforth she will be allowed to meet up to three men per year (Shales being the first), but they shall be of my choosing, and when she is twenty-one I may take her to London and introduce her there. In this way I hope to teach her discernment. Shales, on reflection, has too many traits that might endear him to her; he is bookish and a natural philosopher and has a certain gentleness of manner that she might well admire. Such a man, with such skeptical views, is out of the question. He is too plausible.

In this way I hope she will learn to recognize the good from the bad, the true from the false in mankind, as I have taught her to be discerning in all other matters.

April 18, 1725 Might Shales be sent away from the parish? Plagues me with notes about the state of fences and asks permission to try crop rotation at his own expense and to set up a fund for the sick and dest.i.tute. Is currying favor in the village. Says a school is needed. I haven't time for any of this.

He is very young. Unlikely to die. How to get rid of him?

May 13, 1725 Must a woman marry? Emilie has me. Shall probably live another decade at least, if I take care. There is no man to equal her. A man would confine her intellect.

June 24, 1725 I believe she has been infected by this Shales. Is restless and refuses to give her mind to palingenesis. Wants to pursue her own experiments on air and says she would like to meet him again. Whenever I think of that man, I grow sick at heart.

August 21, 1725 On the day of the picking of the rose, an omen. A visitor. There is a connection, clearly. Emilie returned to the laboratory with a perfect bloom. Truly, I have seen nothing like it. She held it against her bosom, my girl. Her hair was caught on a thorn and a lock fell among the rose petals, black on pink. Her eyes were on fire with excitement because now we could begin. She was, at that moment, all I have ever hoped of her. At long last she is convinced of the truth of palingenesis.

The visitor is a merchant from London. I thought at first there was a great deal to him. He talked of phlogiston and applied it to his own business with s.h.i.+pping. He has attended lectures at the society. Then I realized that he is a sham. After a very few minutes, he stopped listening to me and his eyes strayed to the laboratory door. He is here, I believe, because he has some pa.s.sing curiosity about alchemy. Emilie doesn't see that he is shallow, and so I am reluctantly forced to concur with Mrs. Gill that the girl is vulnerable. Am amazed that her wisdom in all other things does not extend to this. But I cast my mind back to my own youth and a predilection I once had for a young chambermaid. Margaret. I remember the toss of her head as she threw back her heavy hair and how a glimpse of her ankle or wrist used to excite me so much I couldn't study. I longed to hold her earlobe between my finger and thumb. I thought that it would feel warm and succulent. My father pointed out that she was a distraction and I should learn to curb my desires. But I could not. When she was sent back to the village, I spent night after night yearning for her. She had an empty mind and a large, troublesome family. I saw for myself that she would bring me nothing but grief, but I thought of her constantly and was in physical pain until my father took me away to London. When I came back, she was married, and I never went into the village after that. I have often thought, however, that if I had been allowed to spend time with her, if I had spoken to her at length, I would have been repulsed by her coa.r.s.eness and all my desire for her would have gone. So I have allowed this Aislabie to return, and trust Emilie to see for herself how worthless he is in relation to her. I believe in this respect he is far less of a danger than Shales.

August 23, 1725 He came again, and I have sent him away. Emilie took him to the orchard, and they spent a few minutes together, according to Mrs. Gill. The corruption has set in quickly. Now she wants to go with me to London, presumably so she can meet him there-or another like him. I believe Shales to be the root cause of all this restlessness. He began it.

She is not ready to face the temptations of the city. Am not convinced she could withstand them. Shall buy her a present. An alembic, perhaps, or a book. This must suffice. And then another time will take her to London, when she has proved herself to be a little wiser. Perhaps there would be no harm. Could take her to a lecture or two. My fellows at the society will be amazed at what I have achieved.

September 22, 1725 She She She Monstrous She Well I will not September 23, 1725 I do not deserve this.

I am an old man. I have given her every last ounce of myself.

I trusted her.

I should never have gone away.

September 26, 1725 Called Gill. Said, "Where were you when this happened? Don't tell me you didn't know what was going on." He stood with his hands hanging. I said, "Gill, she was in your charge. You witless . . . you ungrateful . . ." Brought staff down on his head and shoulder. He scarcely flinched. Stared dumbly. He was there at her start. Had he no remembrance of that? Brought it down again on his shoulder, and he took it from me, placed it on the bench, and walked away.

The misery that she has brought upon us all.

Mrs. Gill came in with my supper. Said, "You must eat, sir." I said, "After all I have done for you. You have been negligent." She was weeping. Weak tears. She said nothing at first. Then she said, "She is a woman, sir. She will make her own choices. I am not her jailer, and neither are you."

She said, "There is no turning back time, for all your art. You stand to lose her if you won't forgive her."

Every hour or so the girl has come to the door and knocked. I hear her skirt brush against the wood. I hear her breathing. So I keep the library door locked and go into the laboratory, where I won't be troubled anymore.

September 30, 1725 He came.

I weep. Can't stop. Saw him so clearly for what he is. How could she be so foolish as to fall for him? Of all people. He is nothing. He is like Flamsteed at the society, caring only for his own ambition.

I see it all. It is her mother. And, fool that I am, I only realize now that since her birth I have been fighting not one enemy but two-mother and father.

This Aislabie is perfumed and smooth-handed. Have lain awake at night and thought of how he must have touched her. My Em . . . I had speeches ready. I thought I would say to him, "I know you through and through. I found you out while I was in London-the slave trading, the South Sea dealings, the false story about your father and his farm. You are nothing." I thought I might send him away and keep Emilie with me and look after her and forgive her, but I saw it was hopeless. She will have him because she can't resist him. He comes from the world that is in her blood. He's been there all along, and I never noticed. And he knows too much. He is full of veiled threats. I won't have him hurt her like that. It seems he has uncovered all our secrets.

In the s.p.a.ce of a few weeks he undid all I had achieved, every last shred of sense, because something in his flesh called out to her. My life's work is over. The experiment has failed.

[ 5 ].

THERE WAS ONE more notebook, but I stopped reading. I had my answers, and I thought if I read about my father's suffering after I married Aislabie his words would haunt me forever.

Annie came as usual to swab me with ointment, dress me in a clean s.h.i.+ft, wash my face. Mrs. Gill was away delivering twins in Lower Selden and not expected back until morning. I said, "How can I repay you, Annie, for all you've done?"

"I'm paid well enough by Mrs. Gill."

"Nevertheless, I should like to thank you."

I expected her to ask for money-I had won ten guineas at the gambling table on the night of the red party-but instead she crept back toward the bed and stood with her hands clasped and her tongue showing. "There is something, if you mean it. I should like to know how to read."

I wondered how someone as stupid as Annie could be taught to read. And I was strangely resentful that she should want such a thing. I think I saw her, just for a moment, as a rival. But then I told myself that between them she and Mrs. Gill had saved my life, so I promised her that we would begin as soon as I had the strength.

I was rewarded by a smile reaching almost ear to ear. "I've always wanted to read," she said, "since I saw you in church following the prayers in the book."

"You remember me from when you were a child?"

"Of course."

"And what did you think of me, Annie?"

"I don't understand."

"When you saw me, what did you think?"

"I felt sorry for you, of course."

"Sorry? Why?"

"Because you had no mother. Because you was alone with him in that great house and there seemed no way out for you."

[ 6 ].

THE NEXT MORNING when Mrs. Gill came, I was sitting up with a shawl wrapped round my shoulders and my hair brushed. "I should like to get up now, so that you can sleep in your own bed," I said.

"Don't worry on my account. I can sleep anywhere. I still have my room at the house."

"What's happening there?"

"They've been taking it apart, bit by bit. But for now they've stopped. I slept late as a result."

She uncovered my burns and said I would soon be well. I touched my face and felt the hard skin on my cheeks. When I asked for a mirror again, she said she'd bring one from the house. She was in a great hurry and wouldn't meet my eye. I think she knew what was coming.

I said, "Mrs. Gill, was there no affection at all between my parents?"

She shrugged.

"Why did my father suspect that my mother might have Catholic blood in her? I thought you said her family were Huguenots."

"I may have done."

"Why does he keep writing about my mother's nature as if it was foreign to him?"

"She was foreign. She was French."

"Yes, but what about his own nature? Why does he never talk about his own blood and how I have inherited his nature?"

She was about to fasten the neck of my s.h.i.+ft, but her hands went still. Her face was so close to mine that I could see the veins in the thin skin of her eyelids.

"So," I said, "I'm not my father's child. Then who am I? Wasn't my father married to my mother?"

"Of course they were married. You are his child."

"Did she deceive him with another man?"

"She never deceived him."

"Then what?"

She b.u.t.toned the s.h.i.+ft-quite a struggle, as Sarah had sewn such tight little b.u.t.tonholes. Sarah. I'd scarcely given her a thought since the explosion. Where was she now? The last I remembered was a pair of trim ankles retreating up the terrace steps, a slight stagger to accommodate the weight of pregnancy. Of course, that was another thing wrong with my father's notebooks. "He began writing about me when I was a day old," I said. "That's not right. He would have begun at my beginning."

"Leave it, Emilie."

"I can't. You know I can't."

She was white-faced. "You tell me this, Emilie, is it always best to know everything, as you and your father insist on doing? Or sometimes is it best just to be quiet and let things lie as they are?"

"If it's possible to know, I have to know."

"Is that why you nearly killed yourself in that laboratory? Even if the finding out kills a person, is that still best?"

"Yes. Yes. The truth is everything. If we can only know. That's what he taught me."

"Then that's your choice," she said, "but it isn't mine."

[ 7 ].

I HEARD NEARLY every chime in the church tower that night. The swallows stirred in the eaves before four o'clock, and then at last I slept, but only fitfully, because I knew I had set something in motion I couldn't stop. And sure enough, in the morning Mrs. Gill stormed up the stairs and said she'd had enough of me being in her bed and that I must go back to Selden soon, my brooding and waywardness were making her cordials go sour. So she and Annie wrapped me up and helped me downstairs and through the steamy little kitchen to the garden, where Gill had laid out a mattress and heap of cus.h.i.+ons from the manor. He hovered at the end of the garden to catch sight of me, and when I waved and called his name he nodded vigorously several times and picked up a spade as if he had no time to linger. Then I was left alone to watch the play of sunlight on the leaves and the headlong plunge of a bee into the trumpet of a foxglove. At eye level with dandelions and camomile buds, I followed the business of ants and leafhoppers, ladybugs and wood lice, and I stared so long at a stem of fennel that I swear I saw it grow. A robin hopped over my still hand; I felt its slight, brief weight, saw the dust on its feathers. There was so much going on that I thought I would lie there forever with my head to the ground and never have to involve myself with my own kind again.

Mrs. Gill came back with the last-or, as it turned out, the first volume-more worn than the rest with swollen pages and bruised corners. She hung over me, still holding the book. "You'll blame me for what you'll find in this, but I have always done what I was told. Gill and I spoke about it. He said that what she doesn't know will plague her more than what she does. So here it is, given you've asked for it. But remember, Emilie, whatever you might read and whatever you might think, you have been loved."

I looked up at her s.h.i.+ny, inscrutable face, and knew as I took the weighty little volume and felt its cover, soft as moss, that she and Gill were the only solid things left to me and that I must hold tight to what she had said.

May 30, 1706 I had spent the day investigating the nature of green vitriol that Digby believed has healing properties and can knit wounds. (Discussed same with Mrs. Gill, who says the essence of healing in a wound is clean air and as little interference as possible.) Consulted Glauber for his expertise on irons and read how he recommended the same for treatment of some ulcers and cancers.

It was early evening but very windy and wet from heavy gray clouds, and I worked by the light of a single candle. When seven struck, I took up my staff and prepared to enter the laboratory, and it was at that moment, as I moved away from the fire, that I saw a woman's face at the window. She was very low in the gla.s.s, just her head visible, with the rain streaming from black hair and one hand held flat to the pane, so that at first I thought she must be a chimera. I snuffed the candle to see her better, and her hand again fell against the gla.s.s then slid down as if she hadn't the strength to hold it there. I summoned Gill and told him to bring her in, and meanwhile went so far as to light four candles that I might see her properly. I then prepared this notebook so I could write her down, and put away my other books and eyegla.s.s in case she proved to be a thieving girl.

Gill was half carrying her, and she was wringing wet and huge with child. We put her in my chair by the fire and looked at her. There was a great deal of flesh exposed at her breast and neck, and her feet were bare. She was sodden, head to foot, and filthy from the mud she had picked up in the woods. Her ankles, from what I could judge, were swollen to twice the normal size for a woman of her age. By comparison, the wrists were thin. Her skirts were torn and ragged, and there were bits of ribbon and lace hanging down. As I have written, the bodice was gaping so that one breast was entirely exposed. I noted that it was veined like a cow's udder and the nipple was dark and wide, and rested on the high swelling of her belly. She was white and s.h.i.+vering and moaning a great deal. She smelled of the river and mud, and something else, somewhat fishy, which I took to be a woman's smell. Her fingernails were bitten and black.

I asked where she had come from, but she didn't reply. Nor when I asked her name. Then she jolted her knee up and put her hand on her belly. Her face contorted, and it occurred to me that Mrs. Gill should be brought.

"But she's sewing upstairs and I daren't disturb her," said Gill.

I ordered him away, and meanwhile tried again with the girl. Then it came to me that she was actually mumbling not in English but French. My own French is fluent for the purposes of reading, rather than speech, but I managed to make her understand when I asked her name. At last I heard her say, "Emilie." But then she moaned and arched her back and almost jerked herself out of the chair.