Ship Fever (7 page)

Is it possible?

Eight months later, Sarah Anne and Christopher stand on London Bridge with Miss Juliet Colden and her brother John, all of them wrapped in enormous cloaks and shivering despite these. They've come to gaze at the river, which in this January of remarkable cold is covered with great floes of ice. An odd
way, Sarah Anne thinks, to mark the announcement of Christopher and Juliet's engagement. She wishes she liked Juliet better. Already they've been thrown a great deal into each other's company; soon they'll be sharing a house.

But not sharing, not really. After the wedding, Juliet will have the household keys; Juliet will be in charge of the servants. Juliet will order the meals, the flowers, the servants' livery, the evening entertainments. And Sarah Anne will be the extra woman.

The pieces of ice make a grinding noise as they crash against each other and the bridge. Although the tall brick houses that crowded the bridge in Sarah Anne's childhood were pulled down several years ago and no longer hang precariously over the water, the view remains the same: downriver the Tower and a forest of masts; upriver the Abbey and Somerset House. The floating ice greatly menaces the thousands of ships waiting to be unloaded in the Pool. It is of this that John and Christopher speak. Manly talk: will ships be lost, fortunes destroyed? Meanwhile Juliet chatters and Sarah Anne is silent, scanning the sky for birds.

Wrynecks, white-throats, nightingales, cuckoos, willow-wrens, goatsuckers—none of these are visible, they've disappeared for the winter. The swallows are gone as well. An acquaintance of Christopher's mentioned over a recent dinner that on a remarkably warm December day, he'd seen a small group of swallows huddled under the moldings of a window at Merton College. What were they doing there? She's seen them, as late as October, gathered in great crowds in the osier-beds along the river—very late for young birds attempting to fly past the equator. In early May she's seen them clustered on the largest willow at Burdem Place, which hangs over the lake. And in summer swallows swarm the banks of the Thames below this very bridge. It's clear that they're attached to water, but attachment doesn't necessarily imply habitation. Is it possible that they are still around, either below the water or buried somehow in the banks?

If she were alone, and not dressed in these burdensome clothes, and if there were some way she could slip down one of the sets of stairs to the river bank without arousing everyone's attention, she knows what she would do. She'd mark out a section of bank where the nesting holes are thickest and survey each hole, poking down the burrows until she found the old nests. In the burrows along the river bank at home she's seen these: a base of straw, then finer grass lined with a little down. Small white eggs in early summer. Now, were she able to look, she believes she'd find only twists of tired grass.

The wind blows her hood over her face. As soon as she gets home, she thinks, she'll write another letter to Linnaeus and propose that he investigate burrows in Sweden. Four times she's written him, this past summer and fall; not once has he answered.

Christopher and John's discussion has shifted to politics, and she would like to join them. But she must talk to Juliet, whose delicate nose has reddened. Juliet's hands are buried in a huge fur muff; her face is buried in her hood. Well-mannered, she refuses to complain of the cold.

“You'll be part of the wedding, of course,” Juliet says, and then she describes the music she hopes to have played, the feast that will follow the ceremony. “A big table,” she says. “On the lawn outside the library, when the roses are in bloom—what is that giant vine winding up the porch there?”

“Honeysuckle,” Sarah Anne says gloomily. “The scent is lovely.”

She can picture the wedding only too clearly. The other attendants will be Juliet's sisters, all three as dainty and pretty as Juliet. Their gowns will be pink or yellow or pink and yellow, with bows down the bodice and too many flounces. The couple will go to Venice and Paris and Rome and when they return they'll move into Sarah Anne's large sunny bedroom and she'll move to a smaller room in the north wing. The first time Juliet saw Sarah Anne's room, her eyes lit with greed and pleasure. A
few days later Christopher said to Sarah Anne, “About your room…” She offered it before he had to ask.

“Christopher and I thought you'd like the dressing table your mother used,” Juliet says. “For that lovely bay in your new room.”

But just then, just when Sarah Anne thinks she can't bear another minute, along comes another of her dead father's elderly friends, accompanied by a woman. Introductions are made all around. Mr. Hill, Mrs. Pearce. Sarah Anne has always enjoyed Mr. Hill, who is livelier than his contemporaries, but he is taken away. The group splits naturally into two as they begin their walk back to the Strand. Mr. Hill joins Christopher and John, and Mrs. Pearce joins Sarah Anne and Juliet. But Mrs. Pearce, instead of responding to Juliet's remarks about the weather, turns to Sarah Anne and says, “You were studying the riverbank so intently when Mr. Hill pointed you out to me. What were you looking for?”

Her face is lean and intelligent; her eyes are full of curiosity. “Birds,” Sarah Anne says impulsively. “I was looking for swallows' nests. Some people contend that swallows spend the winter hibernating either under water or in their summer burrows.”

She explains the signs that mislead observers, the mistaken stories that multiply. At Burdem Place, she says, she heard a friend of her brother's claim that, as a boy, he found two or three swallows in the rubble of a church-tower being torn down. The birds were torpid, appearing dead, but revived when placed near a fire. Unfortunately they were then accidentally roasted.

“Roasted?” Mrs. Pearce says with a smile.

“Crisp as chickens,” Sarah Anne says. “So of course they were lost as evidence. But I suppose it's more likely that they overwinter in holes or burrows, than that they should hibernate under water.”

“Some people read omens in the movements of swallows,” Mrs. Pearce says. “Even Shakespeare—remember this? ‘Swallows
have built in Cleopatra's sails their nests. The augeries say they know not, they cannot tell, look grimly, and dare not speak their knowledge.' Poetic. But surely we're not meant to believe it literally.”

Sarah Anne stares. There's nothing visibly outrageous about Mrs. Pearce. Her clothing is simple and unfashionable but modest; her hair is dressed rather low but not impossibly so. “I believe that one should experiment,” Sarah Anne says. “That we should base our statements on evidence.”

“I always prefer to test hypotheses for myself,” Mrs. Pearce says quietly.

Juliet is pouting, but Sarah Anne ignores her. She quotes Montaigne and Mrs. Pearce responds with a passage from Fontenelle's
Entretiens sur la pluralité des mondes.
“Do you know Mrs. Behn's translation?” Sarah Anne asks. At that moment she believes in a plurality of worlds as she never has before.

“Of course,” says Mrs. Pearce. “Lovely, but I prefer the original.”

Sarah Anne mentions the shells that she and Christopher have inherited from Sir Hans Sloane's collection, and Mrs. Pearce talks about her collection of mosses and fungi. And when Sarah Anne returns to the swallows and says that Linnaeus's belief in their watery winters derives from Aristotle, Mrs. Pearce says, “When I was younger, I translated several books of the
Historia Animalium.
”

Sarah Anne nearly weeps with excitement and pleasure. How learned this woman is. “How were you educated?” she asks.

“My father,” Mrs. Pearce says. “A most cultured and intelligent man, who believed girls should learn as well as their brothers. And you?”

“Partly my father, partly my brother, before…Partly by stealth.”

“Well,
stealth
,” Mrs. Pearce says with a little smile. “Of course.”

In their excitement they've been walking so fast that they've left Juliet behind. They hear the men calling them and stop. Quickly, knowing she has little time, Sarah Anne asks the remaining important question. “And your husband?” she says. “He shares your interests?”

“He's dead,” Mrs. Pearce says calmly. “I'm a widow.”

She lives in London, Sarah Anne learns, alone but for three servants. Both her daughters are married and gone. “I would be so pleased if you would visit us,” Sarah Anne says. “We have a place just a few miles from town, but far enough away to have all the pleasures of the country. In the gardens there are some interesting plants from North America, and we've quite a large library…”

Mrs. Pearce lays her gloved hand on Sarah Anne's arm. “I'd be delighted,” she says. “And you must visit me in town. It's so rare to find a friend.”

The others join them, looking cold and displeased. “Miss Colden,” Mrs. Pearce says.

“Mrs. Pearce. I do hope you two have had a nice talk.”

“Lovely,” Mrs. Pearce says.

She looks over Juliet's head at Sarah Anne. “I'll see you soon.” Then she hooks her hand into Mr. Hill's arm and walks away.

“Odd woman,” John says. “Bit of a bluestocking, isn't she?”

“She dresses terribly,” Juliet says, with considerable satisfaction. From the sharp look she gives Sarah Anne, Sarah Anne knows she'll pay for that brief bit of reviving conversation. But her mind is humming with the pleasure of her new friend, with plans for all they might do together, with the letter she'll write to Linnaeus the very instant she reaches home. She imagines reading that letter out loud to Mrs. Pearce, showing Mrs. Pearce the response she will surely receive.

“We should write him about that old potion,” Mrs. Pearce says; and Sarah Anne says, “What?”

“For melancholy. Don't you know it?”

“I don't think so.”

“It's a potion made partly from the blood of swallows. Birds of summer, symbols of ease—the potion is supposed to ease sadness and give wings to the feet.”

“More likely than what he's proposing,” Sarah Anne says, and Mrs. Pearce agrees.

It's September now—not the September following their meeting but the one after that: 1764. The two women are in an unused stable at Burdem Place, patiently waiting, surrounded by their equipment. It is just barely dawn. Down in the reeds, where the birds are sleeping, they've sent Robert the gardener's boy with a net and instructions. What they're talking about while they wait is the letter Sarah Anne received last week from Carl Linnaeus, in which he graciously but firmly (and in Latin; but Sarah Anne can read it), dismissed her theories and stated his absolute conviction that swallows hibernate under the water. The letter upset Sarah Anne, but she would not have done anything more than fume had Mrs. Pearce not been visiting. It was Mrs. Pearce—Catherine—who'd said, “Well. We'll just have to do the experiments ourselves.”

On the wooden floor they've set the bottom half of a cask, which Robert has filled with water. Below the water lies a few inches of river sand; on the surface a board floats an inch from the rim. A large piece of sturdy netting awaits the use to which they'll put it. Inside the stable it's still quite dark; through the open door the trees are barely visible through the mist. Above them the house sleeps. Just after four o'clock, Sarah Anne rose in her new room and tapped once on the door of the room down the hall, where Catherine stays when she visits. Catherine opened the door instantly, already dressed.

Recently it has been easier for them to talk about the swallows
than about the other goings-on at Burdem Place. Juliet's pregnancy has made her ill-humoured, and Christopher has changed as well. Sarah Anne knows she should have expected this, but still it has come as a shock. These days the guests tend to be Juliet's frivolous friends and not the older naturalists. Young, not old; some of them younger than Sarah Anne herself. For weeks at a time they stroll the grounds in fancy clothes and play games while Sarah Anne hovers off to the side, miserable in their company.

Who is she, then? She doesn't want to act, as Christopher does, the part of her parents' generation; but now she's found that she doesn't like her own peers either. She fits nowhere. Nowhere, except with Catherine. She and Catherine, tucked into a wing away from the fashionable guests, have formed their own society of two. But she suspects that, after the birth of Juliet's child, even this will be taken from her.

Christopher hopes for many children, an army of children. This child, and the ones that follow, will need a nurse and a governess, Juliet says. And a nursery, and a schoolroom. Sarah Anne has seen Christopher prowling the halls near her bedroom, assessing the space and almost visibly planning renovations. He's welcomed Catherine's frequent long visits—but only, Sarah Anne knows, because they keep her occupied and him from feeling guilty about her increasing isolation. The minute he feels pinched for space, he'll suggest to Sarah Anne that Catherine curtail her visits. And then it's possible he'll ask Sarah Anne to be his children's governess.

But Sarah Anne and Catherine don't talk about this. Instead they look once more at Linnaeus's letter, which arrived addressed to “Mr. S.A. Billopp” but which, fortunately, Christopher didn't see. They arrange their instruments on the bench beside them and shiver with cold and excitement. They wait. Where is Robert?

It was Catherine who first approached this weedy twelve-year-old,
after Sarah Anne told her she'd once overheard him talking about netting birds for food in Ireland. Catherine told him that they required two or three swallows and would pay him handsomely for them; Robert seemed to believe they had plans to eat them. Still, at 4:30 he met them here, silent and secret. Now he reappears in the doorway, barefoot and wet to the waist. His net is draped over one shoulder and in his hands he holds a sack, which pulses and moves of its own accord.