The Stargazer's Sister (33 page)

He shakes his head. “I think the heavens themselves must have decided to obey you. You have conjured forth a comet, Miss Herschel, and it has appeared at your command. Congratulations.”

Back at Observatory House—Dr. Maskelyne insisted on ordering a carriage to take her home, and she wants only to return to her own rooftop viewing platform—she sleeps for a day. The next night, she returns to her rooftop for another look, perhaps her last, at her comet.

Indeed, it appears again, exactly where she expected to see it. Yet despite what Dr. Maskelyne said, she feels as she has always felt in the presence of the stars, not the reach of her power but rather the dominion of the vast universe.

There will be other comets to follow. Of that, she now feels oddly certain.

—

THE NEWS TRAVELS FAST,
and soon, even before William and Mary are home, letters of congratulations begin to arrive, addressed to her at Observatory House.

High Priestess of the Heavens,
one letter begins, from an admirer in Lisbon, a physician and amateur astronomer with whom she and William have had friendly correspondence over the years.

Still on his honeymoon, William writes, as well, in reply to her letter—she had made it brief and formal—and to an additional letter from Dr. Maskelyne.

William’s excitement and pleasure—and his pride—are evident in his words, but they bring tears to her eyes, nonetheless.

I wish I were with you,
dear Lina,
William writes,
to share in your victory.

SIXTEEN

Silence

Another letter from William arrives: he and Mary have decided to extend their trip for a few more weeks, he writes, and meanwhile new lodgings for her finally have been arranged.

Eventually a place of your own choosing might be found, if you wish,
he writes,
but for now these new quarters will keep you close by
us,
which is our only desire. Mary has seen to it all.

Lina packs her belongings at Observatory House. There is very little she wants, after all, just her clothing and books, a few pieces of household furniture and effects to supply her needs. She assumes she will be able to return to use her rooftop observatory as often as she likes, though nothing has been said about this directly. William appears to imagine that she will continue to help him, that her expulsion from the house to rooms nearby is neither surprising nor regrettable, nothing to be mentioned or to occasion complaint. That she must leave Observatory House—her
home—
is a decision that appears to have been reached without any discussion, as if everyone naturally agrees that such a change in circumstances is mutually desirable, and her opinion is unnecessary.

She does not know if Mary suggested it to William.

Perhaps Mary’s mother proposed it, the maiden sister being unwelcome in a house with a new bride.

Two servants from the Baldwins arrive to take Lina’s belongings for her, but Stanley has given her orders to wait for him. He will not hear of her going without him, but he must be at an auction in the morning. He will be there by two o’clock, he tells her.

She tries to work in the old laundry, but she cannot keep her mind on even the simplest of tasks. Everything seems to impress itself upon her as if she were seeing it for the last time.

Finally, she gives up. She goes into the orchard and sits on the grass near Stanley’s hives, which make a pleasant buzzing sound. If she leans her ear against the wood, she feels the vibration in her cheekbone, the bees going about their business. After all, it is just an ordinary day.

—

HER NEW HOME,
she discovers, is a pair of rooms above a butcher’s shop on the Windsor Road in Upton.

Her belongings have been delivered ahead of her, as promised, but they have been deposited every which way, boxes and hampers crowded into a narrow hall. The men had taken no care. It seems to her, in fact, that they have been deliberately careless. She looks around, bewildered. Do the servants at the Baldwins’ dislike her or her brother or Mary Pitt to treat her things in this way? Has she or William given offense?

Stanley is outraged, repeating again and again his complaints.

“I
told
them before they left that
I
would make arrangements for you,” he says, “but Miss Pitt”—he corrects himself—“Mrs. 
Herschel
said their servants would take care of it, that she wouldn’t trouble me.”

Lina finds that some dishes in a crate have been broken, including a small Chinese vase that was a gift from Henry.

You should have some things you like about you,
William had written,
so of course take anything you wish from Observatory House. We want only for your comfort.

She’d noticed that he writes of himself and Mary together as if they are of one mind. He writes
we
now, never
I.

The disorder in the rooms is terrible. The walls are dingy, and the windows in the front room overlooking the street are grimy. Moving from the first room into the second, seeing the smoke stains up the plaster above the fireplace and the narrow mantel, she feels disbelief. Had William not seen this place? Perhaps he thought the rooms perfectly located in the village, that she would no doubt enjoy the convenience of being so near to everything. Perhaps he did not understand how small it is.

She looks around. How is she even to cook a meal for herself? After so many years in William’s company, after all her service to him, such great happiness between them, she cannot believe that this is where fate—where
William
—has deposited her, that he could imagine her to be happy here, coming to Observatory House and knocking on the door like a guest.

Stanley is behind her. When she turns from the window, she sees he is having difficulty controlling his face.

“Missus,” he says. “Oh,
missus.
”

She stands motionless in the center of the front room. She can hear the sounds of activity from the street outside: horses’ hooves on the stones, the bells ringing the hour at the church, the conversation of passersby below. She has a sudden memory: sometimes, when William grew weary from sitting too long at his calculations in the laundry, he would call for her, and she would oblige him by taking off her shoes and walking barefoot over his back.

Had anyone ever come upon them doing this, surely they would have thought it strange.

How unobserved they had been at the house.

How often alone and yet together.

—

THAT NIGHT SHE CANNOT SLEEP.
There is no help for it, she knows. She sits up, feels for her boots. She will go for a walk. She is not afraid of the dark. She has never been afraid of the dark.

She has spent so much of her life awake at night that the Windsor Road’s emptiness now, its silence, does not trouble but rather consoles her. She passes the last dark building—the blacksmith’s forge, smoke still rising from his chimney and a smell of burning in the air—and walks along a quiet stretch where the road runs past a small pond. There is plenty of moonlight, the moon’s reflection floating in the pond. She stands for a while and listens to the deep bellowing of the bullfrogs, the light chirping of the tiny green frogs. She walks on until she thinks she has tired herself sufficiently, and then she turns back.

It is William who discovered the
Georgium Sidus,
William who was—who
is—
the king’s genius, William who has understood the stars and the planets and all their places in the universe better than anyone else. What is she? She knows that her accomplishments, though far less than William’s, amount to something, of course. But perhaps her accomplishments are only the rewards of the dullest virtues—
women’s
virtues—of effort, interest, and consideration. Even her comet, though it required experience to know where to look for it—as William has always said, seeing is an art—is mostly the result of her patience.

Will there be forever now only these few rooms and a narrow hall over a butcher’s shop, the smell of blood below her?

When she returns from her walk, it is nearly dawn. A mad rooster crows in a nearby garden. In bed again, she closes her eyes. Then she opens them in the darkness.

From the window, she can see the constellation of Aquarius resting like an urn tipped on the celestial equator. It pours forth its stream of stars, a beautiful deluge sprayed across the sky. In China, William once told her, the constellation was called
Heu Leang,
the Empty Bridge.

She thinks now about the Scotsman Ferguson, the astronomical instruments he developed for showing the motions of the planets, the places of the sun and moon. This man—no doubt a genius like William—began life as a shepherd boy, she knows, lying on his back in the meadows at night surrounded by his flock, measuring the distance between stars with a knotted string. The thought of others who, like her, have spent their nights alone watching the stars consoles her now.

It had once comforted her to be reminded that she and William, though he was in England and she in Hanover, looked up at the same moon.

The rooster crows again. Her head aches. She turns on her side. Her eyes are dry. Anger keeps her grief at bay, she thinks. She shifts again, lies on her back on the unfamiliar bed, and stares up into the dark. She has taken off her boots, but she has not undressed. By refusing to put on nightclothes, she can somehow postpone her acceptance of her new home, the dreadfulness of it. She feels certain now that William did not see this place before the arrangements were made. Maybe even Mary didn’t see it; maybe the task had been left to a servant—
find somewhere for the sister
—and it had suited a servant to see that rent was paid to some relation.

Surely if William had seen that there was no garden, no kitchen, just these low ceilings and crooked stairs…surely he would not have sent her here. And of course there is no place at all for her telescope.

She will not stay here.

She gets up again and wraps herself in a shawl of soft pink wool, a gift from one of the princesses several years ago, sent to her via William on one of his trips to Kew. She reaches down beside the bed and takes up her daybook. She draws up the blanket around her and props her back with a pillow.

She must find another place to live. Surely there will be a cottage nearby—she’s seen enough of them on her walks—with a good aspect for viewing the sky, somewhere close enough that she can walk to Observatory House, if she chooses. She has no money of her own, of course, beyond what is paid to her monthly by the queen, hardly enough to live on. She will have to depend—depend yet again—on William’s kindness, on Mary’s conscience and her fortune.

She will not desert William. She will continue to work for him, to help him in all his endeavors. She will not forget what she owes him.

But she is not sure she can forgive him.

She looks down at her journal. She has nothing she wishes to write about what has happened. After so many years at William’s side, after a life as interesting and varied, as adventurous and wondrous as that of any woman in England, of any woman’s in the
world
…now, she realizes, she has nothing at all to say. Or nothing she is willing to say.

She ties up the book tightly with a cord like something she means to weight with a brick and drown.

The rooster has stopped crowing. She blows out the candle.

She listens.

Silence.

This is the shore on which she has been washed up, she sees. It is an ill-prospected shore, dark and stony, Andromeda’s lonely rock, nothing at all like the shore at Yarmouth where the laughing, brown-eyed man once took her in his arms and carried her through the waves.

No. She will never be able to forgive William for this.

—

IT IS YEARS LATER,
crossing the field between Observatory House and the cottage where she finally took up residence, when Lina slips in the snow one winter night and sprains an ankle. She has intended to join William at the telescope, but it is clear when she attempts to stand that she cannot manage the walk.

The village boy paid to escort her every night with a lantern as she goes between her cottage and Observatory House runs for William.

Back in her own cottage, where the boy’s father carries her, she confesses to Dr. Onslow, who has arrived after being alerted by one of William and Mary’s servants, that she fell during a spell of faintness. Her old headaches have been bad recently, the spots before her eyes during these episodes more numerous and prolonged. Sometimes her vision clouds completely, as if a fist were closing, the aperture of light shrinking to a pinprick.

Dr. Onslow, holding her wrist, recommends a fortnight in a darkened house, if it can be contrived.

She should rest her eyes, at least. And then, should she lose her sight altogether, he tells her—and William and Mary, who stand anxiously nearby, Mary despite the late hour—that it would be well, while she still has some vision left, if she has time to rehearse how she might navigate the world as a blind person. It would be perhaps a prudent precaution.