The Stargazer's Sister (27 page)

The mechanism for adjusting the position of the telescope, despite its enormous weight and size, is clever—more of William’s ingenuity at work—and Lina has no trouble managing it alone. In a little hut built at the base of the scaffolding, she sits at a table with the sidereal clock and Flamsteed’s atlas open before her, and hot bricks at her feet. From the information William calls down to her through the speaking tube, she records the declination and right ascension and any other circumstances of his observations. In a single night, William often finds as many as four or five new nebulae.

It feels to Lina as if the universe is exploding around them.

But still the mirror is not quite right, William frets.

The weather has cooled considerably. The temperature now frequently drops well below freezing at night. William dresses in extra layers of clothing and hardly seems to notice the cold. Before he ascends to the platform, he rubs his face and hands with the cut side of a raw onion, a prevention he believes protects him from the ague.

Lina suspects William would not eat or drink at all over these long, cold, dark hours if she did not from time to time over the night climb the ladders to the cage with sustenance for him. He does not want to take his eye from the telescope for fear of missing something critical. As in their early days in Bath, when he was beginning to practice polishing mirrors of the size he imagined, she feeds him by hand—cheese and bits of soft cooked beef, boiled eggs, apples and plums she has dried that summer.

She speaks quietly—or not at all—on these occasions, only asking a question from time to time about what William sees in the sky above them. She does not want to disturb his concentration or the communion she knows is established between astronomers as skilled as William—he can find anything in the sky almost instantly—and the stars. The only sounds are the creaking apparatus of the telescope when its position is adjusted, and the occasional hooting call of the owls that fly at night through the fields and woods and down along the river. In the cold, empty meadow, the sounds have an ancient clarity, carrying far in the chilled air, and the ground, hard with frost or light snow, shines under the moon’s light. She remembers the creatures she once imagined on the sun and moon; William has never abandoned his theory that planets other than their own are inhabited, or his belief that the moon is studded with volcanoes, though she knows that many in the Royal Society doubt him. She thinks now that those beings, if indeed they exist, are far stranger than those she had pictured when she was a child: the old, dark-faced priest from Hanover with his turnip nose—surely dead by now—or the tall, gentle creatures she had imagined, their eyes like those of her beloved old horse.

William’s lips close around her fingers, the morsel of meat or bread and cheese or fruit she offers.

She wipes his mouth for him.

She brings hot tea in an enamel jar wrapped in flannel. She holds it to his lips, a napkin under his chin, so that he can drink.

She feels as always at these moments a mixture of awe at William’s stamina and tenderness at his helpless submission.

In her apron pocket is a flask with brandy. She uncorks it and holds it to his lips.

No one else, she feels sure, would ever care for him in this way.

She cannot imagine, from all the women she has met—including those she is certain would regard William Herschel, with his proximity to the king, as a very fine catch—a wife who would do what she, Caroline, does, staying awake all night with never a care for her clothes or her hair or her own fatigue. In the darkness, she stands below William on the spectators’ viewing platform for a long time.

Above them the stars glitter, a beautiful pageant, brilliant and mysterious. There is a language being spoken in the silent distances, Lina feels, music played. She and William lack the tools or faculties to hear it, but she knows he inclines toward it, certain of its existence.

—

TO WILLIAM’S ANNOYANCE,
the king now calls frequently for his presence at Kew or Buckingham Palace or Windsor, wanting news of the telescope’s yields or further instruction with the telescopes William has built for him. When William is away, Lina spends some hours alone at the smaller refracting telescope she has set up on the platform that two carpenters have built for her on the flat roof of the old laundry, now their new library. Along with the ladder on the outside wall, one of the ironmongers has fashioned her a clever circular stair that leads to a skylight in the ceiling, which may be pushed easily aside. At night she regularly sweeps the sky, trying to teach herself, as William has said,
how to see.

It is not easy.

She has lost her old sensation of the stars being fixed points pasted against the sky. Everything around them, she now knows, is moving. Yet if she closes her eyes, the knowledge of this still makes her dizzy. Often at the telescope she has to steady herself—her hand reaching for something solid—against the sensation of falling. It is only the ticking of the clock beside her, its metronome set to assist her in timing her observations, which reminds her that she is on terra firma. When she looks down, she sees the garden below, even in the dark illuminated by lights from within the house. She sees the shapes of the barns and the curve of the orchard rows beyond, the scaffolding standing at its distant spot alone in the meadow. In William’s absence, the telescope is lowered, as if hanging its head in weariness.

Much of what she sees on earth now reminds her of the sky with its planets and comets, its blooming nebulae full of clusters of stars: the English hawthorn branches she has come to love, full in spring of white flowers. Falling snow. The shining flagstones of the terrace on rainy nights, the lights from the house falling across them in bands like the Milky Way. From the rooftop she can see down to the small pond, and on clear nights its surface reflects the stars, so that they seem both above and below her. When she stands alone in the darkness at her own little telescope, sweeping by orderly degrees across the night sky, she knows now that she will never tire of it.

She is grateful for this joy, the joy of being amazed, this transformation of her gaze from admiration—for anyone can see the stars are beautiful—to astonishment.

This is William’s greatest gift to her, she thinks, the gift of awe. She lies down with it at night and wakes with it in the morning. Somehow, her awe makes what is quotidian or tedious—the tiring business of making meals or beds, or washing clothes—almost holy.

—

AND THEN ONE NIGHT
it happens.

William has been frustrated by the persistent imperfections of the mirror, imperfections that interfere with and distort his vision, but now, at last, he thinks it is perfect. He aims the telescope into the sky, and within only a few minutes, he calls down triumphantly through the tube:
A sixth moon of Saturn,
Lina.
There it is.

Lina, sitting in the hut, lifts her hand from the page and stares out the little window into the dark. The ink in her bottle has already frozen. Her feet and hands are so cold she can scarcely feel them.

A moment later, he speaks again, his voice strangely near. She thinks of the first night of their crossing to England, when he held her against him and spoke into her ear above the sound of the waves and the wind in the sails.

“And a seventh moon,” he says now. “Lina. There is a
seventh.
” Silence follows.

Then he says, “I’m coming down.”

Lina leaves the hut and begins to lower the telescope, but her legs are shaking. Had the telescope failed them, she cannot imagine what would have happened. But it has
not
failed them. William was right.

He descends from the viewing platform by ladder and comes to help her fix the telescope into its resting position.

His eyes are shining, and he reeks of raw onion, but he takes her face in his hands and kisses her on one cheek and then on the other. It is so cold that the muscles of her face feel frozen. She tries to smile.

“My monster,” he says, and for a moment she thinks he means
her
…what can he mean, addressing her in that way?

She thinks of the moon, her face.

And then he laughs. “Our forty-foot
monster.
It has obliged us, after all.”

—

THE NEXT EVENING,
Henry Spencer comes to see for himself. First he and then Lina ascend in the viewing chair, William giving them directions through the speaking tube about where to look.

Later that night, after they return to the house and have a late supper, William excuses himself to write letters to Dr. Maskelyne and Sir Joseph Banks and to the king. Henry will take them with him when he leaves the next day for London. He will be proud to serve as messenger with such news, he says.

Lina’s relief at the immediate and profound yield of the forty-foot is immense. She realizes now how worried she has been that the king’s investment would turn out to be for naught, and that William’s assertions about the capability of the new instrument might be exaggerated.

Henry has been a frequent visitor to Observatory House over recent months. She knows that he, too, has staked his reputation on William’s success, many times adding his endorsement to William’s petition for additional funds. At Henry’s direction, Lina has meticulously calculated every expense: every candle, every pint of beer, every log for the fire, the accounts with their suppliers, the wages they pay, even to Stanley. Surely Henry, too, is relieved now. Yet it has occurred to her that their expenses will not disappear with the completion of the telescope. They still must eat, must light the fire. William’s salary from the king of fifty pounds a year will do little to approach meeting their needs. And William will not be satisfied with these discoveries, she knows. There are other endeavors: the catalog of nebulae he wishes to publish, which will require hours and hours of her time, as well as his. And yet
these
sorts of ambitions—to support the work of other astronomers, rewriting the sky for them—are not so sensational as to attract the king’s financial support.

From the parlor where she and Henry sit, she can see William’s light in the old laundry through the window—they have continued to call it that, despite its transformation into a well-stocked and useful library. William had put more wood on the fire before leaving the room. She feels its warmth at her back now, though a draft moves around their feet. The remains of the night’s supper are on the table, a roast chicken, stewed cabbage, a plum tart. The house is empty but for the three of them. Immediately following the forty-foot’s revelations about the moons of Saturn, Lina recommended that William send James and Stanley home for a visit with their father, who has been ill. They are both in need of a rest, she senses. Before leaving, Stanley hugged her, and she realized—her cheek against his shoulder, his arms around her—what a big man he would one day become.

“Wee Stanley,” she said, using her pet name for him. “I will miss you. Come back to us soon.”

She wishes he were here now. How both he and James would be rejoicing with them.

With William’s departure from the room, the usual silence falls between her and Henry.

She begins to stand to clear away their dishes, but Henry moves his chair abruptly, its legs scraping against the floor.

“I have been thinking,” he says. He looks away from her out the window into the darkness.

She stops, her plate and William’s in her hands.

“I have been thinking,” he repeats, “that the
queen
might be very glad to be invited to support the work being done here at Observatory House. Especially
your
work, Caroline.”

“I do not see why that would be,” she says. “I am only an assistant—and a kitchen maid—here. You know that I would do anything for William, but—”

“Nothing William has done would have been possible without you,” Henry says. He turns to look at her. It is the first time he has held her gaze for any length of time. She feels her face coloring.

Henry had eaten little at dinner, she’d noticed. He seems even more gaunt than usual. She looks past him. On the wall, they have hung two of his paintings, both still life arrangements. A dead hare hangs its head in one, a tiny window of light in its black eye.

Henry continues. “I do not mean that William lacks for intellect or imagination, obviously, or that you have made up for some deficit there. It is extraordinary, what he has accomplished. Truly he has changed our understanding of the universe more than any other human being of our time, and I suspect for some time yet to come. And he has given all the rest of us the tools to continue his work, the knowledge of
how
to see. That may turn out to be his greatest contribution.”

Henry looks around the room, as if its spare furnishings might somehow suggest proof of William’s abilities. “You live in such a simple way, the two of you,” he says quietly, as if speaking to himself. “I envy it.” He pauses. “But that is not what I mean to say.” He turns back to look at her. “I mean that your hand is in everything, is everywhere, Lina—the workshops, the gardens, the library, in every paper or letter William writes, every list and map and notation in an atlas. I know that you are with him night after night. Few women—few
people,
man or woman—would be capable of such devotion. But it is not just your loyalty that must be rewarded. Your
intelligence
is absolutely necessary to these endeavors. I believe you
know
that. I would think less of you for false modesty.”

He has never made such a long speech to her, she realizes, nor spoken so fervently.

She stands still, holding the plates. It is true, she knows, that she has been more than a kitchen maid or housekeeper to William. Why would she say such a thing to Henry, of all people? She has William to credit for training both her mind and her eye, but it is unbecoming to be self-deprecating, and meanwhile it is insincere, too. She
has
learned things. She
has
been of use. It is true.