by James Morrow
“An affectionate sentiment, but spoken without feeling,” she said. “What ails thee, Mr. Crompton?”
“I’Christ, woman, can you not see that in constructing this second and more elaborate treatise, you will grievously neglect our daughter?”
Taking up knife and fork, she carefully hexed her crab-cake. “Such fatalism ill becomes you, sir.”
“Methinks you confuse fatalism with foresight,” Tobias said, tearing apart a fragrant loaf of bread. “Tell me you’ll abandon this scheme.”
She placed a crab-cake wedge in her mouth and chewed. “I would ne’er renounce my life’s very purpose.”
“You cannot be a fit mother to Rachel, nor yet a proper wife to me, and still wear the clothes of a natural philosopher.”
“Might I give you my opinion?” She consumed a second morsel. “By my lights the clothes of a natural philosopher are considerably more dignified than the livery of the Boston Postmaster.”
“Then you will be pleased to know I am on the point of changing that very garment.”
Tobias buttered his bread, sipped his claret, and explained himself. The previous evening a missive had arrived from the Royal Mail Authority offering him employment as Postmaster-General for the British Crown Colonies in America. He had already drafted his letter of acceptance. By the end of the month they would all be Philadelphians, living in William Penn’s famous province to the south. Their new situation, he insisted, had everything to recommend it—a higher income, a lower latitude, a larger house.
“Congratulations,” she said, a barbed sneer in her voice. “Thou hast toiled most diligently for this appointment.”
“Prithee, Mrs. Crompton, judge not these fruits ere you’ve tasted them.”
An unhappy presentiment suffused her, for she knew nothing of Philadelphia save its reputation as a hotbed of Quaker fanaticism. But Tobias was not about to solicit her views on the matter. The instant he spoke the words “Postmaster-General” in the same hushed and reverent voice her father had employed when pronouncing “Witchfinder-Royal,” she understood that their relocation was a fait accompli.
Aunt Isobel had always averred that the universe abounded in forking paths, and yet it seemed to Jennet that just one course lay open to her. By Hassane’s account the world was opulent in options, but Jennet could see before her only duties. She was obliged to pack up her prisms and her pendulums, tell Rachel that circumstances were taking them to a warmer clime, and pray to Jehovah and Kautantouwit that the City of Brotherly Love might one day acquire a second epithet, the Cradle of Demon Disproofs.
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DESPITE JENNET’S MISGIVINGS, her new environs and the revised argumentum grande proved uncannily compatible with each other. The thoroughfares of Philadelphia constituted a tidy grid, and whenever she left their Chestnut Street townhouse to stroll amidst this rectilinear arrangement, a concomitant orderliness descended upon her thinking. Equally vital were the energy and inspiration she drew from the omnipresent Society of Friends. Although her Quaker neighbors indeed practiced several varieties of irrationality, including the eponymous paroxysms on display in their meeting-houses, they had nevertheless bestowed on Pennsylvania an ethos whereby hunting, hanging, or even talking about witches seemed quite the silliest of activities.
By the time Rachel had celebrated her fifth birthday, the undercurrent of disgruntlement that Tobias brought to most of his dealings with Jennet had transmuted into an overt hostility. His bitterness traced not just to the demon disproof, which he viewed as progressing only at Rachel’s expense, but also to his wife’s failure to conceive a second child. Whilst Jennet privately ascribed this situation to Hassane’s unguent, she offered her husband a much less plausible though far more palatable explanation: God had elected to seal her womb until she’d defeated the Witchcraft Act.
“How durst you presume to know the designs of Providence!” Tobias roared. “Such arrogance appalls me!”
“I warned you of my philosophic passions from the first,” she reminded him.
“Shall I tell you my darkest suspicion, Mrs. Crompton? I believe you deprive me of a son through the sheer force of your womanly will.”
“If womanly will could accomplish such a feat,” she snarled, “there’d be far fewer squalling babes in the world at this moment—of that I assure thee!”
Her favorite place for perusing the second edition of the Principia Mathematica was the sprawling meadow on the eastern shore of the Schuylkill River, a tract on which the city’s day-laborers had recently staked out a bowling-green. Whenever the weather allowed it, she and Rachel and Nellie would arrive before noon, luncheon-basket in hand. During the subsequent hour they would consume their wheaten bread and cold meat at a leisurely pace, whilst Jennet held her companions spellbound with the Moon-Bead Legend or some other nugget of the Nimacook imagination—the Fable of the Wily Raven, the Parable of the Greedy Porcupine, the Adventure of the Tortoise Who Had No Shell. After the meal Jennet would begin the day’s struggle with Newton, leaving Rachel and Nellie to wander about in search of amusement. Sometimes they enacted Nimacook stories using Rachel’s poppets. Sometimes they watched the men rolling their bowls across the green. But Rachel’s preferred activity was to sit by the river’s edge and catch fish, for she was now an expert in the bobber-and-hook method her mother had mastered many years earlier on the banks of the Merrimack.
One sweltering Sunday afternoon in August, Jennet took up the luncheon-basket, shouldered Rachel’s fishing-pole, and set off with her daughter for the Schuylkill, her intention being to loll in the meadow and thoroughly digest Newton’s theology, the better to avoid tainting the new argumentum grande with some subtle Arian heresy. Nellie was absent from their company, for Tobias had given her the day off, that she might visit her brother’s family in Cohasset. Arriving at the river, mother and daughter devoured their midday repast, Jennet the whole time offering Rachel her usual lecture on the safe and proper way to fish: keep one foot planted against a rock, never yank abruptly on the line, take care lest you lean too far over the bank whilst throwing back your catch. Rachel as always assented to these conditions, and so her mother sent her off in quest of salmon and perch.
For a reading space Jennet selected a tranquil patch of shade hedged by a half-dozen maples. She entered the grove, spread her blanket on the grass, and set about pondering Newton’s relationship with God.
According to her translation of the 1713 Scholium, the Supreme Being existed everywhere at once, His essence never varying from place to place, “all eye, all ear, all brain, all arm, all power to perceive, to understand, and to act.”
She looked up. Rachel sat on the riverbank, fishing-pole in hand.
Fixing her thoughts again on Newton, Jennet learned that the Almighty operated “in a manner not at all human, in a manner not at all corporeal, in a manner utterly unknown to us.”
She placed her finger betwixt “utterly” and “unknown,” omnio and ignotus, then glanced toward the river in time to see Rachel snag a perch, its sleek form twisting and twitching like a bodkin in thrall to a lodestone. The child unhooked the creature and returned it to the water.
Jennet went back to the Principia. The Almighty, Newton averred, was best conceived as a kind of supernatural steward or spiritual landlord. “For a being, however perfect, without dominion, cannot be called Lord God.”
A child’s scream shot across the meadow.
Jennet glanced up. A monstrous void crouched beside the Schuylkill. A vacancy, a vacuum, a demon made of empty space.
Tossing Newton aside, she gained her feet and sprinted toward the river. A liquid cacophony reached her ears, an amalgam of thrashing limbs and gurgling screams. She halted at the bank. At first she saw only a frothy white turbulence; next Rachel’s fishing-pole jerked into focus, riding the chaos—and then a human form appeared, submerged, one hand gripping the pole, the opposite arm flailing madly. Jennet leaned forward, making ready to pitch herself over the edge, when suddenly a hirsute man
with the prodigious proportions of a blacksmith brushed past her, threw down his woolen cap, kicked off his shoes, and leapt into the water. A maelstrom took shape before her eyes, a mad Charybdis at whose circling center Rachel’s would-be rescuer struggled to subdue her panic.
As a dozen more bowlers rushed onto the scene, Jennet brought her hands together in a prayerful posture. Surely the All-Eye-All-Ear-All-Brain-All-Arm who’d hurled the planets into orbit could raise a single in-substantial child from a river. Surely the Almighty could suspend His principia long enough to save one small virtuous life.
“Prithee, Lord God Jehovah!”
No sooner had Jennet voiced her entreaty than a sobbing, shivering, wheezing Rachel climbed onto the shore, followed by the blacksmith, if such was indeed his trade, coughing and panting. Rivulets rushed down the limbs of child and man alike. Scum stippled their clothing. The smith spat out a mouthfulof water. The bowlers continued to collect on the bank, the commotion drawing them as inevitably as a lodestone beguiling iron.
“Oh, my sweet darling!” Jennet cried.
Despite her ordeal, Rachel had managed to retain the fishing-pole, which she now held before her like an infantryman brandishing a pike. “I h-hooked an eel!”
“My eye’s own apple!” Jennet lifted Rachel into the air, hugging her so tightly that the child’s teeth stopped chattering, even as her sobs became titters of relief.
“Methinks ’twas the mightiest eel in Creation!”
Squeezing Rachel more tightly yet, Jennet planted a hundred kisses on her cheeks, freckling her with affection. “My heart’s own harbor!”
“He sought to steal my fishing-pole, but all he got was my hook!”
Jennet returned Rachel to the grassy earth, then grasped her shoulders and rotated her toward their benefactor, who now wore an expression so stern it might have humbled a troll. “You must tell this good gentleman that your gratitude runneth over,” she instructed her daughter.
“My gratitude runneth over,” Rachel muttered tonelessly, setting the fishing-pole on her shoulder.
“Prithee, give me your name,” Jennet asked the dripping smith, “that I might one day write a ballad in your honor.”
Much to her surprise, the man replied reprovingly, “Truth to tell, I am niggardly with my name, declining to share it with vain and careless persons.”
“Well spoken, brave sir!” declared a soot-smeared chimney sweep, stepping from the crowd and facing the smith. “Ye’re right to scorn this sister of Narcissus, who reads a book whilst her daughter nearly drowns!”
A surge of chagrin passed through Jennet, reddening her cheeks, felling her crest. Seeking to redeem herself, she faced Rachel and addressed her in a voice directed more to the mob than to the child. “Ere the week is out, your mother will undertake to tutor you in the art of swimming.”
“Ye must not besmirch the word ‘mother’ by applying it to so unfeeling a creature as yourself!” insisted a plump and ruddy bystander wearing the blue-bibbed apron of a butcher.
“No weasel accords its young such disregard!” a linen-frocked wag-goner asserted.
“No snake would deign to claim ye as a parent!” a lantern-seller averred.
“A slug would blush to find ye up its family tree!” cried a hatchet-faced man whose sheepskin skirt marked him as a tanner.
Uncertain how to answer this menagerie of accusations, Jennet instead grabbed Rachel by the wrist and escorted her away from the bank. The child’s dress exuded a sharp, oddly pleasing fragrance, the aroma of damp silk mingled with the river’s pungent mud. Upon reaching the maple grove, Jennet retrieved the blanket, the basket, and her Principia Mathematica. She repressed an impulse to spit on Newton’s masterwork. The canniest treatise yet penned had now become the most corrupt, for the reading of it had nearly cost Rachel her life.
“Tell me, darling, do you hope we might soon enjoy another sojourn by the Schuylkill?” Jennet asked.
“Aye, Mother.”
“Then you will hold silent concerning this afternoon’s misadventure. Is that clear? You must not speak of’t to Nellie, nor to Mrs. Dinwidie, nor even to your own father.”
“Not even to Father?”
Jennet nodded solemnly. “Were the postmaster to learn of your plunge, he would bar us both forever from these shores.” She laid a hand on Rachel’s soggy shoulder. “Now hear my most sacred vow. May my hair fall out and my skin turn green if I e’er again let you stray from my sight.”
“No hair?” Rachel said, giggling.
“Quite so.”
“Green skin?” the child added, snickering more exuberantly yet.
“Indeed.”
If you were five years old, it seemed, no event could be more entertaining than your mother’s transmutation into an acorn squash.
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THREE MORNINGS AFTER her daughter’s descent into the Schuylkill, Jennet awoke to find that Tobias had vacated their mattress—a surprising circumstance, for they both normally remained beneath the covers until Nellie announced that their veal and eggs were ready. A queasiness spread through her. The planet’s axis seemed suddenly askew. She abandoned the mattress, pulled on her dressing gown, and dashed, pulse throbbing, into her daughter’s bed-chamber.
Rachel was gone. Her wardrobe had been plundered, each compartment as empty as a skull’s eye-socket.
Jennet proceeded to the kitchen. Nellie sat at the mahogany table. Tears stained the maid-servant’s cheeks. Red veins striated her eyes.
“I am instructed to give ye this,” Nellie moaned, presenting her mistress with a folded sheet of vellum secured by a blob of tallow. “I’Christ, Mrs. Crompton, he hath stolen her away!”
Jennet cracked the seal. Tobias’s spidery hand covered the vellum top to bottom.
19 August 1716
My Dear Jennet:
Three weeks ago the Royal Mail Authority propos’d to make me Postmaster-General of a far-flung Colony whose Identity I shall reveal to you at some future Date. None but a Fool would forgo this Opportunity to build a Postal System from Scratch, using everything I know about the Safety of Carriers, the Arrangement of Drops, and the optimal Deployment of Horses.
Mayhap you believe a Husband ought not to keep such a Secret from his Wife, but if Secrets are to constitute the Matter of our Conversation, I must tell you that my best Rider, the worthy Harry Bainbridge, was playing at Bowls this Sunday hard by the Scene of Rachel’s near-Drowning. He hath judg’d the whole Affair an appalling Instance of maternal Disregard, the very Sort of Threat I always knew you would one Day visit upon our Child.
By the Time you read these Words, Rachel and I shall have sail’d free of America, away on the morning Tide. Assuming favorable Winds, our Carrack will reach London by October, whereupon we shall head for my new Place of Employment. Fret not, Mrs. Crompton, as I mean to provide for your Welfare. The Townhouse is yours to keep, likewise the Horse Jeremiah, and you shall eventually receive from me a Stipend of thirty Pounds per Quarter, more than adequate for your material Needs as well as Nellie’s Wages.
In short, I have decid’d that our Union, ne’er a Prize to begin with, hath play’d through all its Possibilities. You bear no Love for me, and your Devotion to Rachel waxes and wanes like the Moon. Indeed, I say you are bound to Naught on God’s green Earth save that damnable Thesis of yours.
Be thee well, my distract’d Wife. Ere long I shall make such Arrangements as will permit you to wed another Englishman. As for myself, I doubt that I shall ever marry again, for Jennet Stearne Crompton is still my most precious Balm, even as she aspires to be my perpetual Bane.
Sincerely,
Your Tobias
“Oh, Mistress Crompton, last night Rachel told me of her fall into the river, and how the news of’t hath made her father wroth,” Nellie wailed. “Methinks this disaster is largely of my making. I should ne’er have gone visiting on Sunday.”
“Nay, Nellie, you aren’t to blame,” Jennet said. “The fault lies in the incongruity ’twix
t Mr. Crompton’s ambitions and mine own.”
As she read the letter a second time, all the while clenching her teeth like a surgical patient biting a musket-ball, she felt herself undergo a sea-change. Her fury transformed her. Body and brain she became a freak, the most ferocious prodigy yet acquired by the Cavendish Museum—the Harridan of Chestnut Street. She grabbed her purse from behind the pendulum-clock, slung the leather thong about her neck, and rushed off to Sharpe’s Livery, where she outfitted Jeremiah with saddle and bridle.
It took her but fifteen minutes to reach the docks. Two towering carracks, their names obscured by mist and distance, followed the Delaware’s southerly course, riding high upon the moon-drawn waters.
Locking her gaze on both vessels, she galloped to the end of Market Street Wharf and dismounted. She hitched the gelding to a mooring post, then set about importuning every passing soul. She detained sweaty sailors newly arrived in port, hawkers selling Malay teas and French laces, pale painted ladies who seemed unaccustomed to daylight, suspicious constables who believed she must be a whore herself, and leering Redcoat soldiers of the same opinion. Though no one could remember whether a child of five had recently taken ship with a rangy man of middle age, a consensus eventually emerged concerning the two carracks cruising down the river. The lead vessel was the Antares, bound for the Sugar Isles, that her captain might convert his cargo of lumber and flour into a cache of Barbados rum, a treasure he would subsequently redeem for two hundred West African slaves. Behind the Antares flew the mail-ship Bristol Maid, carrying tobacco, beaver hats, rattlesnake belts, private parcels—and twenty paying passengers—to England.
An image arose in Jennet’s mind, a rowboat, sufficiently swift to facilitate Rachel’s recapture, and soon she found one, the Manatee, tied to a stone pier adjoining Arch Street Wharf. The tub’s owner, a sallow Quaker crabber with a beard resembling a wasp’s nest, accorded her a sympathetic ear as he transferred the morning’s catch from vessel to quay. Spiky claws and spiny legs probed betwixt the slats that formed the dozen crab-cages. She thought of the Colchester Castle prison-cells, those scores of beseeching arms sinuating through the iron bars.