The Alchemist's Daughter (27 page)

This unwarranted attack on Sir Isaac got my full attention. “Very fond of his unusual niece, I understand,” put in Harford. “The girl has done well for herself by all accounts. Did not model her approach to amours on that of her celibate uncle, but proved herself a calculating little miss. Just as well, because she won’t inherit huge amounts from Sir Isaac. He wasn’t a great businessman. Lost thousands on the South Sea business.”

“You see, Em,” said Aislabie. “Genius ain’t enough. As witness the mess left by your late pa. I’ve had to come up with all sorts of schemes to repair the holes in the Selden finances. Good old
Flora
, for instance. There’s a lot hangs on that ship.”

The door behind me flew open. Mrs. Gill had come to remove the plates. I said again, “I’m not coming to London, but please take Sarah.”

A blancmange, another new dish, swayed on a pewter salver. “Can’t have you risking life and limb here, Emilie. Your place is with me. We’ll see how we get on crossing the Channel, then who knows? The West Indies. A successful merchant should know the destination of his goods and how his ships are run. He has to be bold. There’s money to be made if you send your ships far enough. I may even sail with her when she goes halfway round the world.”

“I didn’t know you called yourself a merchant these days.”

“Whiskey and guns to Calabar, then a new cargo to the Americas.” He beamed at me across the table and took a spoonful from the side of the blancmange, which keeled over.

“I don’t want Sarah, and I’m not going to London. Please take her with you.”

But their conversation had moved on. There was talk of an estimate made at Jonathan’s. Twenty-three pounds a head. Six hundred to a ship. Even if a third were lost, that would be profit in the region of . . . Then a name that had me wide awake again. “. . . ask Reverend Shales,” said Harford. “He’s something of an expert on the movement of air.”

“That’s it. Have a word in his ear. Trouble is, he’s gone off. Called today to let me know he’d some urgent business in Norfolk. But if he ever comes back, obviously, get something useful out of him.”

Shales had been introduced into the conversation as an alchemist might add niter to cause a violent reaction. Gone away? Why?

Aislabie pushed back his chair and lay in a diagonal line, feet far extended, wineglass against his belly, watching me. “Didn’t he mention it, Em? I thought you two were thick as thieves. He’s been summoned to Norwich by his father-in-law. Apparently, his skills are needed to improve the ventilation of the local prison. Too many felons dying before they’ve served their time. Wouldn’t surprise me if he stayed and took a living there. I’ve hinted often enough that I can’t stand his politics.”

I was suddenly so sick that I retched. There was a hasty scraping of chairs, a ring of the bell. “Sarah,” I said.

“We’ve sent for Sarah. She’ll take you to bed. She’ll look after you.”

[ 9 ]

W
HEN
A
ISLABIE CAME
up to the Queen’s Room later, I was waiting for him. I had lit a couple of candles on the dressing table and was enthroned in a cream upholstered chair, still dressed in my green silk. The windows were wide open, and the tassels shivered on the bed curtains. He looked surprised to see me, but he went to the mirror and began unwinding his cravat as he eyed me in the glass. “What’s the matter, Em?”

“I want to know what you’re going to do about Sarah.”

He plucked off his wig and adjusted it meticulously on the stand, removed some pins from the tiny cupboard in its face, wound up a couple of stray curls, and fixed them in place. Then he scratched the back of his head vigorously with both hands. “Good Lord. Could this be a touch of jealousy? Glad to see you’ve got some human feeling, Emilie, but rest assured, Sarah’s nothing but a frolic. You’re the one. Come to London. I lose you in this godforsaken place. We’ll have a new beginning.” He knelt down, put his hands on the arms of the chair, and kissed my neck, but I was limp as a doll.

“Take Sarah with you to London,” I said.

“Not without you.” He gave me a little shake. “Get it into your head. She’s nothing. She’s not the point.”

“How long has she been your mistress? Since she came to our house? Before you married me? Is that why you employed her, to have her conveniently on hand?” He laughed, leaned forward, and gave me a smacking kiss on the cheek. As I didn’t move a muscle, he began to unbutton his waistcoat, shrugged it off, and hung it up. “How did you think I felt last night when I saw you with her?”

“I never know how any woman feels, my love. I know that you all seem to be happy to open your legs if a man hits the spot with a kiss on the mouth or a tweak in the right place.” He sat down on the edge of the bed and removed his shoes, untied his garters, and unrolled his stockings. There was no reaching him in this mood. I had seen it a dozen times before, the fatal indifference of his once he could get no more from a situation. “Listen, it doesn’t have to be so complicated. Come with me to London. Forget about Sarah. I need you. You’re the one.”

“But Sarah. You can’t just pretend she doesn’t exist.”

“She doesn’t, really. She’s small as a gnat in the scheme of things. Look. Look at the state of this place.” He took my upper arm and pulled me over to the window, where we could see the broken terraces and ancient woods. I smelled him, my husband, exactly as when he first came to the house—the heat of him, the scent of his skin, a hint of alcohol and leather. “I can’t be doing with hanging around this bankrupt estate while my wife messes with the black arts and produces nothing. Did you know I once had high hopes of you, Emilie? I thought there might be something in the rumor that you and your pa had the key to endless riches. I hoped it would be just a matter of time. At least, the fanciful bit of me hoped that—fortunately, the rest of me was somewhat more worldly. But I can’t be waiting about here any longer. It isn’t the life I want. I need a healthy son. I didn’t marry to be chained to some ancient pile and a woman whose whole self is wrapped up in the life she once had with her father. I didn’t marry your father, for Christ’s sake, Em.”

“I don’t know why you married me.”

“How could I resist? Black-eyed Emilie, the alchemist’s daughter, with her pockets full of mystery and beauty to take a man’s breath away. My God, when I first clapped eyes on you, I thought this was the one legend that hadn’t been a lie. Everyone knew that the old alchemist John Selden had a lovely daughter hidden in his laboratory. An untouched pearl for some lucky man, we said, so I set out to woo you.” He kissed my neck again, and my ear. “What can I do to convince you I love you?”

“Nothing. You don’t love me. I want nothing more to do with you. But take Sarah with you to London. I don’t want her here.”

“Can’t be done. She’d be in the way.”

“You can’t just leave us both here.”

“Then you come. Good Lord, the solution is very simple. Come and astonish London again with your brains and beauty. Maybe you’ll even bear a son at last.”

“You deceived me. I thought you loved me, but what you wanted was Selden, the name and the land. You were never prepared to be faithful. You never wanted me to be as I was, with all that I knew. You have wasted me.”

“No, madam, I have tolerated you. I should tie you to my horse and drag you to London by the hair for what you have done in defiance of me. No other man would have put up with so much.”

“There’s no need to put up with it anymore. I don’t wish to be known as your wife.”

“Your wishes have nothing to do with anything. You’re my wife, and you’ll do as I say. To the letter.”

But there was something going on that I couldn’t quite grasp. He lacked conviction and wouldn’t insist on me leaving tomorrow. Perhaps it was because
Flora
was his passion now and that he would rather sail on her alone. So it was no surprise when he gave me a dismissive little push. “Then stay. See how you like it with the house pulled down about your ears.”

“And Sarah?”

“I’ve told you. Sarah is a minor irritation. She’ll disappear soon enough if you give her a couple of sovereigns. Don’t bear a grudge, Em. Forgive your old Aislabie. All will be well, you’ll see.”

I watched him untuck his shirt and unbutton his breeches, the hairs on his calves, the thrust of his buttocks. The odd thing was he was no different than he’d ever been and really did have as much affection for me as when we first met. It was simply that his feeling was of the kind that he might have for his horse or other slightly cherished object that delighted his senses from time to time. Whereas I had loved him so much that I had abandoned myself to him utterly. And because I had loved him so, the reverse of that feeling was not indifference or contempt, but the coldness of stone. I saw him now as an agent of destruction, bringing havoc in the wake of his irresistible smile.

As I left the room, I glimpsed the flicker of a skirt and caught a whiff of Sarah’s floral perfume. Though I couldn’t forgive her, I did pity her for what she had surely overheard.

C
HAPTER
E
IGHT

St. Edelburga’s Fair

[ 1 ]

W
HEN THE CLOCK
in the tower of St. M. and St. E. struck five, I stood in the entrance porch to watch Aislabie go. I wanted to be sure. He might be careless and leave bits of himself about: a dimple on the landing, a satirical twinkle in the gaps between the flagstones. I wanted to be rid of him, a clean slate.

It was the kind of May morning when everything shifts: grasses, leaves, clouds. I wasn’t alone. Sarah had got up early, too. Somewhere on the edge of it all, a dove-gray skirt fluttered, there was a breath of her fragrance and a shiver of animosity.

Then a
clip-clop
of hooves on cobbles, and Aislabie broke into the morning like a fist through parchment. He and his horse were tight-packed with energy: the brilliance of harness and glossy flank, the sheen of fabric, the stamping impatience to be gone. I stepped forward and he doffed his hat, bowed very low, and came up smiling so that his teeth flashed white as his cuffs. “Wish me bon voyage, Em, and you be good. Harford will be keeping an eye on you.”

Then the smile froze, and his eyes slid away from the damson tree, where Sarah must have been waiting. He shrugged and looked to the open gates, the lane beyond, and in the distance London,
Flora
, a new adventure. The horse hooked up its tail, and a stream of dung thundered onto the gravel. Aislabie lifted his hat one last time and then was gone. The carriage rolled, Gill put his shoulder to the gates, the dust settled, and there was quiet.

[ 2 ]

A
LL THIS TIME,
through the crimson party and beyond, the distillation had continued; the water in the bain-marie simmered and a cloud of condensation gathered on the still head, trickled down the delivery spout, and dripped into the receiver. When there had been a period of four hours or more and no moisture was collected, we poured the cloudy distillate from the receiver back into the flask containing the crusty alchemical residue, and began again.

No two alchemists agree when the distillation phase should stop. Some search for planetary, occult, or meteorological signs. My father was even more inexact.
The sign of fire
was what he waited for. When I asked him to be more definite he said, “We will know, Emilie.” And lo and behold there was always something—a comet, an eclipse, a streak of lightning, a fire in a haystack, or even the unexplained guttering of a candle—to show us it was time to finish distillation.

In fact, the next phase was the most lethal of all and had always marked the end of our alchemical adventure. Whereas the distillation is a delicate stage of the process, the next requires the addition of volatile saltpeter to the mixture, and this causes an explosion that results at worst in the sudden death of the alchemist and at best an end to all his hopes. Mayow says the combination of fixed salt with nitro-aerial particles causes niter to fly off like smoke. And Sir Thomas Browne says the explosion of gunpowder is due to the generation of a large bulk of air by the antipathetic reaction of saltpeter to sulfur.

My father, needless to say, always took the most elaborate precautions before embarking on this dangerous stage by muttering a series of conciliatory incantations, banishing me to a far corner, and making Gill stand by with pails of water. Then he held the flask deep within the emptied water bath and added a meticulous measure of white powder one speck at a time. And little Emilie, wide-eyed behind her sheltering barrier, hands over her ears, saw the flash of light, smelled the delicious, acrid, wonderfully right scent of burning, and knew with sinking heart that this was the peak and the end of our alchemy, because all that would be left was broken glass and some charred, useless substance. The explosion, which invariably ended in disaster, marked a headlong slide to disappointment.

But that little brick furnace, the gently steaming water bath, and the fine glass delivery spout were the warm heart of Selden, my pivot in a spinning world. It seemed to me that the end of distillation was the precipice toward which I was now racing. Beyond that I had no goals and no expectations. All I knew was that I must be ready at the sign of fire.