The Stargazer's Sister

by Carrie Brown

  “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.

  “I believe I must thank you now,” she says quietly. “I know what I have done for William. I am grateful to you, Henry, for seeing it truthfully, for neither more nor less than it is.”

  Henry stands up abruptly. His cheeks are flaming red.

  She looks with sympathy at his poor sore, watering eyes, his long nose, which is pinched and blue. She notices, too, that there are ugly lesions, little eruptions, at his high collar, as if it chafed him. It pains her, as it has always pained her, to look at him, to look at the discomfort he seems to be in. What is it that has caused this man to be so deeply uncomfortable in his own skin, meanwhile showing the world—as a painter and gardener and scientist and physician—such generosity, attending devotedly to both its beauty and its pain?

  He stands and takes the plates from her and sets them on the table, but his hands are shaking, and the forks clatter. Then he reaches out and takes her hands in his. She can feel in his grasp how he trembles.

  “Believe it or not,” he says, “I have never held a woman’s hands like this until this moment.”

  He looks down at her hands. “So tiny,” he says. “And yet so extraordinarily capable.”

  He is to make a proposal to her. She cannot believe it. She looks quickly across the room, out the window. Through the darkness, as if at a great distance from her, she sees William’s light burning in the old laundry. She has a sudden, almost frantic desire to go to him—she has difficulty not removing her hands from Henry’s—to rest her hand on William’s shoulders as he sits at the table writing, to set a cup of tea at his elbow.

  “Do you not feel very small sometimes, Lina, in this vast universe William has illuminated for us?” Henry says.

  She looks up at him. He is smiling, but the expression in his eyes is sad.

  Once she wished for this, she thinks. What has changed? She cannot leave Observatory House. She cannot leave William. Once she had imagined she would be glad to be relieved of her labors for him; she had not understood at all—even though he had warned her—that he would ask so much of her, that she would work so hard. Yet she has come to love even more fully—though she would not have thought greater love possible—not only her brother but also the work itself. She would not give it up. In a way, William has given her herself. Anything else, any other life, she realizes, would be a small life, a narrow life, compared to the one she has now. There will always be a…lack; she thinks of the empty bed, the desires she feels at night, heat in regions of her body that at times is almost painful. But there is no having both, for she cannot have a husband and her brother and her labors with him.

  She never believed she would have a choice, but in fact, she sees now, there is no choice to be made anyway. She would not consider it. And she imagines in any case that Henry acts now only out of his great regard for William, and that he believes it would be a comfort to her, before she is too much older, to be wed. He aims only to provide for her, she suspects.

  “Henry. There is no need,” she begins. “You must not feel sorry for me.”

  His expression changes to one of dismay. “No. Caroline. You misunderstand. Never would I feel pity for you. I admire you beyond any woman I have ever met.” He stops and looks down.

  When he begins again he speaks very quietly, and she can feel in their joined hands their pulse, which seems to have become one.

  “It is not easy for me to say this,” he says. “But if there were a woman I was free to marry, I should choose you. I wish now to convey, to convey…my love.”

  He drops her hands, reaches for a handkerchief, and presses it to his nose and then his eyes.

  Lina is horrified. Pity—and, yes, a kind of love—sweeps her. She twists her hands together. “Henry—” she begins.

  “But I am not free,” he goes on. “I am not free in so many ways it is almost—” He laughs, but it is a bitter laugh. “I would say it is ludicrous, but it is too terrible to be funny. I should like nothing better than to give you any comfort in the world, Lina. I know you will not simply take my money, though I intend to give you and William as much of it as I can now, despite that I am constrained in some ways. And I cannot give you my…body, my self in any way other than as a poor, pitiable companion. For the purpose of companionship, you have already an ideal companion in William anyway.”

  “Henry.” She does not know what he means, but she fears she does not want to know, either. “What is it?” she asks. “What is the matter?”

  “You know that I am a physician, Lina, so you will trust me when I tell you I am absolutely certain. You have heard of the disease,” he says. “Some have called it the great imitator, for it presents in so many different ways.”

  Lina thinks of Jacob, of a conversation overheard long ago. Her father had warned Jacob, shouting at him, that his behavior with women—with prostitutes, she knows now—would endanger him.

  Syphilis. She knows what it is. She knows how it is contracted.

  Henry must see on her face that she under
stands him, because he continues.

  “There is more, I am sorry to say, in some ways the worst yet. For I am in fact to marry, though I will have no contact with the lady at all. It will be a marriage only on paper, in secret, in order that the Spencer estate may be transferred to her father at my death. You see, there has been a debt, a gambling debt from my father’s time, gone unpaid these many years, interest accruing. It must be paid now. They have exercised some kindness in not removing us earlier, wishing to protect my mother. It has been a kindness, in that regard.”

  “Henry! Henry, you are not dying!” She stares at him, horrified. She was right; it has been painful for him to live in his body. She lifts her hands to touch him, but he steps away.

  “I cannot bear for you to know how I must have brought this on myself. Some…instances of foolishness,” he says, as if reading her mind. “Fatal foolishness. I never imagined myself—desirable.”

  She sits down, because she fears she cannot stand. Behind her, a log falls from the fire, and she smells smoke in the room. Her eyes are burning. It is as if he is leaving her, leaving them at this moment, as if she is watching it happen.

  But he takes a seat and pulls his chair near to her. “I intend to convey what I can to William in goods—furnishings, silver, paintings,” he says, “before the event of the marriage takes place. But they have a good idea of my assets, and they will notice losses of any significance. What I want to do, as well, is to speak to the queen about you, especially before the news of the circumstance spreads, as surely it will, once I am gone. What she will give is little, though heaven knows the royal coffers are deep enough, but it will be something to help you, and I believe she will enjoy the autonomy of the gesture.”

  —

  LINA REALIZES NOW that he is saying goodbye. And she had thought he intended to propose marriage to her. What a foolish woman she is, to have apprehended so little. She looks up at Henry’s paintings, the sensuous mound of grapes on the plate, the flowers at the end of their season, petals touched with pink or drops of red blood scattered over a cloth white as a cloud, the hare’s shining fur, its eye holding a window of white light. She does not want to cry. She puts her hands over her mouth.

  “Listen to me,” Henry says. “There is no reason you should not have an annual salary, as William does. It cannot equal his, of course, but it will be something. I think I may suggest to the queen that her investment—her private investment in the work of another woman—will be to her lasting credit in history.”

  Lina drops her face into her hands. She cannot bear it.

  She hears him stand up. “I am so very sorry,” he says. “Believe me, my dearest Caroline, when I say I wish…I wish I could do more. So much more.”

  She takes her hands away from her face. “You are not leaving us,” she says. “You must not leave us, Henry. William will be—I am!—heartbroken. There is no need for it, for you to leave! Stay here. Stay with us! We will care for you, gladly.”

  She stands up. She knows that she did love him once. “I would have said yes,” she says.

  He looks at her, and at that moment she thinks she has never seen an expression of such kindness on the face of any person, even William.

  They look at one another for a long moment. “I think we might have been happy,” he says finally. “I would have tried very, very hard to make you happy.”

  Lina thinks of the moons they witnessed earlier that evening, the ghostly ring of satellites orbiting the planet.

  “How beautiful and strange a phenomenon,” Henry had said. “Every celestial object with its attendants and companions.”

  “I will collect William’s letters from him and ride out this evening,” he says now.

  It feels difficult for her to speak. “He does not know. William does not know?”

  Henry drops his head. “The coward in me…I have written to him.” He produces a letter from his pocket. “I will leave it with you…to give to him. Later, please. After I am gone.”

  —

  WILLIAM DOES NOT LOOK UP when she comes into the laundry. She places Henry’s letter on the desk beside him.

  He looks up at her, and she fears her face will give her away, but he seems to notice nothing amiss. “Going to bed?”

  “Yes,” she says. “Good night, William.”

  There is a coward in her, too. She can neither warn him nor stay to comfort him. She goes to bed, where she expects to weep, but instead she feels a rage so powerful it is as if it will lift her body from the bed or burn her up. She lies rigidly in the cold sheets, her hands clenched, her throat aching from suppressing her grief. Tears run down her face anyway.

  At one point, she realizes that William must be standing in the hall outside her door, for candlelight shows beneath it.

  He knocks softly, but she does not answer.

  Later, regretting this, she opens the door, but the hallway is dark. No light shines from beneath William’s door or, when she goes downstairs, in the old laundry.

  So they are both alone in the darkness.

  England

  1788–1822

  FOURTEEN

  Hooked

  It is Stanley, grown as a young man into an experienced orchardist, who tends capably to the old trees and plants new apple varieties—Bramley Seedlings and Flower of Kent—caring for them through the years. In the market he sells pears and apples from Observatory House’s orchard. The income helps sustain the household.

  In the flower borders along the terrace wall, he and Lina have planted delphiniums and roses, phlox and alliums and asters. In every season, Lina likes to keep a vase of flowers on William’s desk in the old laundry, even when he is away. In the cold months she cuts a frosted sprig of boxwood or a stem of holly, its berries bright, for the silver bud vase that was one of Henry’s last gifts to them.

  She never fills it with water without thinking of Henry; indeed, she feels sometimes oddly close to him, as if he is present along with the constellations and planets—and their inhabitants, should such inhabitants exist, as William says—looking down on her as she goes about her work.

  The vegetable garden, dug in during the spring after their arrival and maintained mostly by Stanley, yields potatoes and cabbages, squashes and beans and peas and lettuces.

  They have, in this way, enough.

  In the old laundry, the muslin curtains sewn by Lina to protect William’s papers and books are bleached and hung to dry in the spring air once a year. They are fastened along polished wooden rods at the tops and bottoms of the high shelves, so that they may be easily drawn aside or closed. When the windows are open to the breeze, the curtains ripple like water. It is pleasant to Lina, while she sits alone working, to feel as if the walls shift responsively around her. Her hand moves swiftly, covering the pages: William’s papers on astronomy, his letters, his Philosophical Transactions, as he calls them. The wooden boxes Stanley builds for William’s correspondence, each letter copied and ordered by Lina according to date and to writer, grow in number. By now she answers alone many of the letters William receives—asking for assistance in locating various celestial objects or for clarification of his ideas—without needing to consult her brother at all. She can sign his signature as easily as she signs her own. There are too many letters for him to attend to himself.

  The old linen smocks worn by the twenty-four men who polished the first big mirror for the forty-foot have been washed and folded long ago and put away in a trunk with wormwood and rosemary to protect them from moth larvae.

  Lina has the sense, growing as the years pass, that everything of William’s life and work must be preserved. There is no object too small to be worth discarding.

  The world will want to remember William, to know him even when he is gone.

  —

  WHEN LINA APPROACHES FORTY, her monthly bleeding, never strong, becomes suddenly painfully heavy for a short time and then in a few months dwindles to almost nothing. She suffers a few fainting spells during these weeks
of heavy bleeding, one in which she falls, cutting her head, from several rungs up on the circular staircase she has had built to her rooftop telescope. She has been discomforted more frequently over the years by her old headaches, rolling spherical objects and explosive flashes in her vision, sometimes areas darkening in odd patterns like frost on a windowpane. But the disturbances rarely last long, and they appear to cause no permanent harm. In general she feels increasingly vigorous, in fact. Her arms are strongly muscled, her hands rough from outdoor work and from so many seasons of cold at the telescope. Sometimes at night in the winter she slathers them with lard and wears gloves to bed. Adapted over the years to little sleep, she does not find it difficult to make do with only a few hours each night.

  She is surprised only occasionally now to find a little brown stain of blood on her undergarments, to feel the rare telltale cramping in her lower belly, a reminder of one of the uses of a woman’s body.

  One Saturday morning in March she works in the kitchen, baking a cake from a supply of hazelnuts and dried currants and orange peel. The smell of the cake rising recalls for her one from her childhood, a round-domed treat studded with candied fruit and cloves and nuts, baked every year by Margaretta’s mother to celebrate her daughters’ birthdays.

  And then Lina calculates and realizes that it is her own birthday today.

  Such events were rarely celebrated in the Herschel house when Lina was a child, and she and William have never observed each other’s birthdays. Often, it seems, they simply do not remember them at all. She realizes that she has lost track of her own age; she sits down at the table, wiping her hands, staring out the window. When she calculates it, she is surprised to find that she has turned thirty-eight.

  William, she realizes, will turn fifty in November.