The Blind Astronomer's Daughter

by John Pipkin

  “But it is a planet!” Her father seizes the half-eaten soft-boiled egg from his plate as though he intends to throw it against the wall. “Had I found it first, I would have made it Theodosium!” He tightens his grip until the last oozings of yolk drip from his fist. “And by rights this man—a musician, no less—has chosen a name for it.”

  She should rush to his side to calm his agitation, but then decides that for the moment it might be better to remain where she is, with the table between them. He dabs his eyes with a napkin and there is something dark and yellow flecking the cloth.

  “Father, how long has it been since you slept?” she asks.

  “Don’t you see, Caroline? He could have named it after himself and no one would question the choice—planet Herschel—or he might have honored someone lost to him with a memorial in the heavens, but instead, the simple man has named it for the king. Georgium Sidus. George’s Star. An altogether idiotic name.”

  There are many things she wants to tell him. It is likely that scores of astronomers before them had spotted the planet and had thought it just a star. Its slow creep across the stellar vault was so slight that none had noticed its position change by a hair’s breadth year to year. The discovery had less to do with making observations than with keeping meticulous accounts. Mr. Herschel had given careful attention to what other men had taken for granted. If only she had compared the discrepancies between her own earlier observations, if only she had studied her calculations more closely and shared her suspicions with her father, she might have been the one to discover what had been hiding in plain view, and the right to name the planet would have fallen to them. But there seemed also some element of accident involved in Mr. Herschel’s achievement.

  “There is no contesting the man’s luck,” Caroline says, thinking that this might offer some small consolation.

  “Luck!” her father opens his fist and stares at his fingers, surprised to find them covered in a mosaic of egg and shell. “The man has something more at his disposal than that.” He wipes his hand on the tablecloth, flicks bits of shell from his knuckles. “Our telescope is too small,” he mutters. “It cannot reach where Herschel goes.”

  “We shall have the new mirror soon enough.” she says slowly. “Mr. O’Siodha says that he has it right this time. All that remains is the polishing.”

  “The musician’s mirror was six inches in diameter. Ours will be only four.” Arthur slides the saucer from under his teacup, pushes his breakfast plate next to it, and studies them side by side for several long seconds. “And now the man boasts that he will build something even larger. A telescope with a forty-foot tube! A mirror forty-eight inches wide! There is no telling what he will find.” He runs his finger around the larger plate. “I will not be beaten again. We must best him at this. We will build a colossal mirror of such magnification that we will be able to count the raindrops falling from the storms on the sun, and we will find the Theodosians waving to us, happy to be thus discovered.”

  She has heard hints of this wildness in his voice before. Sometimes after tracking a shadow across the sun for days, he has thrown himself upon the observatory floor, forearm over his eyes, and complained that imperfections in the lens marred his view, that the filter so darkened the sunlight that the planet escaped undetected. Sometimes in such a fit he has said he would remove the filter and stare at the sun unobstructed. Her heart swells with concern for him now as he sits slouched in his chair, his collar undone, eye patch crooked on his flushed forehead, a smear of bright yolk along his sleeve and palm and stiff in his hair where he has absently run his fingers. And his eyes, too, appear rheumy with egg yolk.

  “We must have a telescope that does not falter in the madness of the chase.” He dabs at his eyes again with the napkin and pushes himself forward onto his elbows, flicking another shard of eggshell. He looks at her and his gaze seems to miss the mark, searching for a sound in the dark.

  She steps forward, worried now that something else, something terrible has happened to him, and when she draws closer she can see the swelling, the blotched veins and yellow crust flecking his lashes, and one eye twitching as though besieged by gnats.

  Chapter 18

  THE ONE-EYED KING

  It is duggan Clare who brings word that something is wrong at New Park.

  He appears with the pocket clock that is once again keeping time to itself, and he tells Owen O’Siodha what he has heard: that Mr. Ainsworth has not risen from his bed for a week, that his eyes are so loaded with rheum that Martha says he appears to have a pair of cracked eggs in his head. And Duggan says that it has surely come from too many nights on the rooftop, exposed to the foulness aswirl in the open air, and what can the man be staring at anyway with the sky shrouded in clouds? As the publican speculates on the causes of Mr. Ainsworth’s condition, Finn carries the old pocket clock to the table at the back and unfurls his leather roll, selects a screwdriver the size of a splinter, and pries open the case. Duggan follows him and leans in close as if to impart a secret, just as the priest had done so many years before, and he whispers that the pocket clock is not his only reason for calling. He tells Finn that there are men gathering in all parts of Ireland to reckon the days of Arthur Ainsworth and his sort. Let these English landlords stare at the heavens all they want, for they will no longer possess the land beneath our feet. Owen hears this and says that he and Finn will have nothing to do with talk of rebellion, that they have trouble enough already without seeking to bring more trouble to themselves.

  Duggan hunches closer and praises Finn’s skillful work, and then he tells him that there are other men who work with fire and steel who are doing what they can to help the cause. When you’re ready to take back what’s yours, come to us. Duggan reaches inside his coat and flashes a bit of green kerchief tucked in a pocket.

  When Owen and Finn next set foot in the workhouse at New Park to begin polishing a new four-inch disk of tin and copper—and this time they are certain that they have cast it properly and ground the shallow concavity in just the right measure—Moira comes with them. They will be scouring and burnishing the surface for hours, and they will need her to supply them with food and drink, for once they begin it will not be possible to stop until the mirror shines like heaven itself. Owen complains that his arm still aches from their last attempt. They had stopped too soon and had not been able to achieve an even luster after that. Finn notices how Owen’s knuckles appear swollen at all times and how his fingers have begun to take on the appearance of thick roots. He no longer swings his hammer with as much force as he once did, and sometimes it seems that he can barely maintain his grasp of the heavy tools that once fit into his hands like an extension of himself.

  Finn runs his finger over the mirror’s dull surface in slow circles and imagines Caroline staring into it. They have come close to finishing before, only to discover blemishes hidden in the metal that no amount of burnishing could fix, but Finn feels so certain of success this time that he has already told Owen and Moira that as soon as the telescope is finished he will leave for Dublin with his leather roll of small tools and the jeweler’s loupe on a string at his neck. Already he can picture his success in the city, and he imagines how he will return with a heavy purse and toss it at the middleman’s feet and declare the remaining debt satisfied. And thereafter he will spend his days working on the brace for Siobhan’s arm. He has studied the arrangement of his own knuckles and the architecture of tendons and bones along the back of his hand; he has tinkered with skeletal articulations in copper the length of his fingers, and once he has perfected the design, he will walk straight to the front door at New Park and call by her old name and present her with a gleaming miracle of hinges and springs. The boldness of the thought makes him shudder. Owen makes a fist and winces and Finn tells him that he will do the polishing himself this time and he pulls on the leather gloves and fits the mirror into the vice.

  Twenty hours they are at it, through the night and into the next day, Finn’s a
rm churning in circles and Owen rotating the mirror slowly to ensure the evenness, and Moira holding a cup to his lips when he asks for it and wringing her hands and pacing the rest of the time. And when they are finished, Finn’s arm hangs spent and sore and feeling as though it might fall from its socket.

  “So this is it, then?” Moira says, staring into the reflection. “It’s no flattering portrait it gives back.”

  “You’re too close,” Finn says, and he feels the vibration of his voice in his arm. “It only works at a great distance.”

  “Ah, but there’s no denying the shine you’ve given it,” she says, waving her hand in the yellowish light. “What next?”

  “We’ve only to seat it,” Owen points to an iron tube, ten feet long, propped against the wall, “but we’ll carry it to the observatory first, and put it together there.”

  Owen goes to the door and calls out to Seamus Reilly to come and help them with the tube, and when the gardener appears, he knocks the mud from his boots and tells them they’ve no need to hurry, as Mr. Ainsworth has taken to his bed again. Owen asks if what Duggan Clare has told them is true, and Seamus nods, and he agrees that it’s the night vapors that corrupted Mr. Ainsworth’s eyes, one worse than the other, and that the doctor has said only time will prove the result.

  “So he has no use for this now, with his eyes so affected?” Owen glares at the mirror and Finn is afraid he will pull it from the vise and throw it into the fire.

  “Ah, we’ll take this to the rooftop just the same,” Seamus says, “as I expect his eyes will heal and he’ll want to be back at it. But I should warn you that it seems your man wants something more now. It’s all he talks about day and night.”

  And a few days later, after Owen and Finn have assembled the telescope in the observatory, but before Arthur Ainsworth is well enough to witness its first light, Seamus Reilly comes to Owen’s forge with a sheaf of papers beneath his arm and a piece of straw between his teeth.

  “This is it, then.” Seamus holds out the papers and turns toward Finn when Owen does not reach for them. Owen stands with his arms folded across his chest, fists hidden beneath his elbows, and Finn knows it is because Owen can barely uncurl his fingers on cold mornings, though he will admit it to no one. Finn unfolds one of the papers, spreads it on the table, and runs the flat of his hands over the creases.

  Seamus points with his thumb as if planting an acorn in the air.

  “And now your man wants this.”

  Owen comes to the table, arms still folded, and shakes his head.

  “What difference is there? It is the same that we have just finished. What need does he have for another one?”

  Finn traces the measurements with his fingertips, and he is shocked by what the numbers suggest. “Ah, no,” Finn says. “This is ten times the size.” He unfolds another drawing showing a huge wooden scaffold as high as New Park itself, with pulleys and ropes to hoist the massive tube into place. Moira leans over Finn’s shoulder to look at the drawing and gasps.

  “The same, but monstrous,” Owen says. “He cannot mean it. Surely he is not serious.”

  Seamus nods.

  “Something so large will bring harm down upon him for sure,” Moira says.

  “He is at it again,” Owen mutters. “He means to prove what I cannot do. That has ever been his aim. This has naught to do with the sky; he means to undo me.”

  Seamus rolls the piece of hay from one corner of his mouth to the other. “It’s not you he wants to undo, Owen. It’s a Mr. Herschel he’s after.”

  Owen shrugs. “Who is this Herschel to me?”

  Seamus scratches the back of his head, checks his fingernails. “Seems this man is building a colossal spyglass in England, and Mr. Ainsworth is set to outdo him in the size of it. What he thinks to gain is anyone’s guess.”

  After Seamus leaves, Owen stands over the table and stares at his hands and he moves his lips silently for a moment, trying to order his thoughts. “We would have to start again from the beginning,” he says to Finn. “With ten times the copper and tin, and ten times the heat. This is impossibility itself.”

  Finn traces the length of the telescope sketched on the paper. It makes a plaything of the telescope they have just finished. The mirror in the drawing is fifty inches across, and it sits at the bottom of a giant tube fifty feet long, and all of it cradled in a wooden scaffold, a pyramid reaching nearly as high as the observatory on the roof of New Park. It would be no small feat to assemble such an enormous device, and putting it to use would involve greater dangers still. Finn walks his fingers along the ladders that run up the side of the scaffold and imagines Caroline climbing to the eyepiece, clutching the rungs one-handed. He wonders if she might be of some help this time, bringing instructions for small alterations and checking the measurements of what is finished, and he imagines her wiping the sweat from his forehead while he works and her finger grazing his cheek.

  “I can do this,” Finn says.

  “Even with your help,” Owen sighs, “I cannot. It will be too much for us.”

  “I will do it alone,” Finn says, and then lets slip, “if you think yourself unfit for it.”

  Owen draws the back of his hand across his mouth and his face turns as red as when he is standing at the fire. “A mirror that size will weigh twenty-five stone, at the least, and it’s your own hand you will smash this time—” He looks away once the words are out. “There will be work for us right here. When it comes time for planting the fields, there will be men wanting plows and spades—”

  “—but not enough,” Finn says. “There have never been enough, and Andrew and Patrick knew it …”

  Owen curls and uncurls his fists slowly, as though grasping after a hammer.

  “Go on then, finish what you mean to say.”

  It is too late to turn back. Andrew and Patrick saw that they would have to work the forge for the rest of their days and never crawl out from under the debt, Dermott and Liam saw it too, but before Finn says any of this, Moira intervenes.

  “The boys have done as they saw fit.” She hugs her shoulders and takes a deep breath, then softens her tone. “It’s only ourselves to think of now, and there’s no need for reminding anyone that we’ve not had our Mr. McPherson banging at the door since this began.”

  Owen shoves his chin into his chest and kicks at the floor. Finn starts to speak but Moira puts a finger to her lips. Owen turns away, then turns back.

  “The last one he wanted took almost two years to get right. How long for this, do you think?”

  Finn looks back and forth between the two sets of plans. “The tube will have to be built in sections, and that will take as long to finish as the mirror itself. And this scaffold is another matter altogether. He’ll need to send for carpenters.”

  “More than a year?” Owen asks, staring at the sagging thatch overhead.

  Finn nods. “Much more than that. And in that time we need not worry over McPherson and the lease.”

  “Still I do not like it.” In the drawing, the barrel stands as tall and wide as a church’s bell tower, and Owen flicks it with a blunt finger as though expecting to hear it ring. “What does the man think to prove by pointing so much iron at the sky?”

  Moira runs her hand through her hair, frayed and rusted like battered clock springs.

  “I dtír na ndall is rí fear na leathshúile,” she says quietly, and Finn recognizes the phrase from the stories she sang to him when he was still a boy in the midst of other boys, stories of fathers and grandfathers fighting for fields stolen from families whose names have faded from the earth.

  In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.

  PART THREE

  1787–1791

  Perigee the point at which an orbiting body is nearest the earth

  Chapter 19

  THE ASTRONOMER’S DILEMMA

  Time’s passage is a miserable thing to reckon.

  And to deprive a man of any portion of his meager allotment is t
hievery of the worst sort. But this, thinks William Herschel, is precisely what they have done. They have taken from him what can never be recompensed, these greedy, threadbare men of science, squint-eyed, slump-shouldered, reeking of the salts and acids and combustible gases they measure and stir in the dark cellars of ramshackle houses, these moneyed dilettantes and dabblers as ready with praise for the buckles on his shoes as they are for the sparkling cold truths of his telescopes, these vapid lords and ladies disgorged by gleaming coaches, tittering and breathless over the newest new thing in a tired world gone to rack and ruin, all of them knocking upon his door day and night, unannounced, uninvited, stealing from him the precious hours he would otherwise spend in observation and calculation, and none of them understanding that what they ask to be shown, with their careless slack-fingered sweeps, is nothing less than a glimpse—far and deep—into the mind of God.

  The fame that follows the discovery of the new planet makes it impossible for William and Lina to continue their quiet life in Bath. At every corner and market stall, they encounter holidaymakers drawn to the city by the sulfur waters and the Pump Room promenades and the promise of meeting the celebrated musician-astronomer from Hanover. He and his sister are forced to reorder their days, reschedule music lessons, put off their stargazing. Visitors arrive year-round, asking to be shown his great discovery, and during the summer months William must explain that the new planet cannot be seen at all, for in the summer months it shares the sky with the sun and will do so every summer for years to come until it finds its way from Gemini into Cancer and Leo, a journey of twenty years at least. To assuage their disappointment he offers to show them spectacular binary-stars, the beautiful double-cluster in Perseus, and the bright stretch of the Milky Way near Sagittarius, quite possibly the very center of the galaxy itself. And sometimes he tells them about the dark cleft he has recently stumbled upon in Scorpius, a frightening hole in the heavens where no stars shine at all, and he waits for the meaning of it to settle upon them, but these visitors are more interested in the terrific landscapes that Lina has imagined for the new planet: chalk sketches of swirling green clouds and ice-cragged peaks and frozen blue oceans shimmering beneath a tiny setting sun. The finding was incidental, he tells them, it was the uncovering of a penny in the soil where one yet hopes to build a castle. He says the new planet is not so important as what remains to be done.