Treason's Daughter

by Antonia Senior

  He stops talking, and the silence echoes. Hen realizes she is clutching Sam’s hand. Ned and his father stare at each other. Hen is struck by their likeness; it is there in the set of their jaws, and the high forehead. Ned is white, but controlled; their father, red and agitated. Cheese sniggers, but the rest ignore him.

  ‘And which of the four, Father,’ says Ned quietly, ‘were you?’ But he does not wait for an answer as he turns away and walks slowly from the room, leaving behind him a vast, solid uneasiness.

  One week later, Ned moves to the Birchs’ house to begin his apprenticeship again with a new master.

  The house feels unconstrained and happier in his absence, yet still Hen misses him. She misses him when the new parliament is called, and there’s no one in the house to argue with her father about its significance. Sam is too callow, too easily distracted; Chalk and Cheese too deferential. She misses Ned’s intellectual fervour filling the house, a reheated version of William Gouge’s sermon spilling out of him, as he seeks to understand by repetition. She envies him his passion.

  One of the radical minister’s arguments tumbles around inside her head, repeated in Ned’s voice.

  ‘What is the reason that there was so great an alteration made by the ministry of Christ and his disciples, by the apostles and others after them, indeed, by Luther, and other ministers of reformed churches? They did not preach traditions of elders like the scribes; nor men’s inventions like the Roman Catholics do. They preached the pure word of God. The more purely God’s word is preached, the more deeply it pierces and the more kindly it works.’

  She wants to be pierced by the pure word of God. The weekly sermons at St Dunstan’s, with their slow and sombre ceremonial – are they, as Ned says, merely the empty traditions of the elders? Is the altar rail, and the minister’s long and tedious sermons, merely the invention of man?

  The pure word of God. The phrase echoes in her mind. She begins to understand why the thoughtless chattering of Cheese and Chalk, and even Sam and her father, could grate the nerves of a man trying to hear such a thing.

  At night, when Nurse has finished her tormenting rituals, Hen lies under the canopy, trying to listen in the stillness. The more deeply it pierces, the more kindly it works. She wants the Holy Spirit to come to her. She screws her eyes tight shut and breathes slowly in the darkness. Sometimes, she imagines the Holy Spirit pressing down on her body. It wraps round her in the darkness, and her limbs feel heavy and soft all at once. She realizes that the Holy Spirit looks disarmingly like Will Johnson, even as it covers her limbs with its presence. She lets herself feel the touch of the spirit with the shaggy dark hair and lively eyes, before pushing the vision away in shame.

  It becomes a nightly ritual of her own, this quest to hear God, which she knows, but pretends not to, will end in a ghostly embrace.

  And so it is with a heightened and almost unbearable embarrassment that she greets Will when he comes to visit.

  She walks into the library to find him sitting with her father. She can barely look at him as they exchange formal greetings, so at odds with the whispering of the Spirit Will in her ear the night past.

  She becomes acutely aware of her own limbs – their immense size and awkwardness. She is huge, gargantuan. An ungainly giant, stomping on oversized feet. She walks across the room, telling herself she lurches, wishing herself graceful. Her crimson-hot head feels as if it is lolling on her neck. Even her tongue is large and flapping; will she be able to speak, to curl her mammoth tongue round even short, familiar words?

  ‘Hen,’ says her father, looking at her curiously. ‘Will has brought me a paper I wanted to borrow.’

  ‘On Kepler,’ says Will.

  ‘Oh, Kepler,’ says Hen, with an unnatural emphasis, as if the astronomer is a long-lost friend resurrected from the dead.

  ‘Yes,’ says Will brightly, to ward off the silence both can see rushing towards them.

  Challoner, watching in amusement, decides to be kind.

  ‘Come, Hen, sit. You will enjoy Will’s explanation of Kepler’s book. My daughter is something of a hoyden, Will. I’ve tried locking her up with a virginal; beating her until she dances like a lady; I’ve tried bribing her to embroider, even if only a kerchief, God’s blood; I’ve tied her to a chair in the kitchen when the puddings are being prepared. But none of it answers. She breaks away and cants away in Latin, or pesters me to teach her mathematics.’

  Hen shushes her father, but is pleased, when she looks at Will, to find him smiling, not recoiling. Nurse has not been shy with her prophecies of spinsterhood for the clever puss of the house.

  ‘I am the only boy, sir, in a family of argumentative sisters. I have often thought that, given the right education, women could master much that men keep for themselves.’

  ‘Now, Will, let’s not turn radical. You’ll have her ranting on the streets next. Now, boy – Kepler.’

  Will shows them the book he has brought: Kepler’s The Harmony of the World.

  ‘Oh, Mr Challoner, how you will appreciate this book. You know already, I think, of Kepler’s Rudolphine Tables, which chart the stars? This book, The Harmony of the World, Miss Challoner, will change the world of natural philosophy, not just guide us to the cosmos. You know, I am sure, that Copernicus placed the sun at the centre of the cosmos? Galileo’s study of the celestial sciences led him to the conclusion that Copernicus was right and, as you know, proved it with the telescope.

  ‘But Kepler, he saw that for the cosmos to be simple and elegant, there was something missing. He realized that the planets move in elliptical orbits.’

  Hen interrupts, not understanding.

  Will takes a pen, proffered by Challoner, and dips it into the inkpot. With a steady hand, he draws a perfect circle. ‘This is what we thought. Indeed, when the ancients believed that the sun circles Earth, they too imagined perfect spheres endlessly revolving around one another. It made the mathematics ugly, though, Miss Challoner, and that was Galileo’s great objection.’

  He draws another circle, this time flattened out at each end. ‘This, Miss Challoner, is how Kepler envisages the orbits. Now, what you have to understand is that this makes the mathematics elegant and simple. It also reasserts God’s place at the heart of the cosmos.’

  ‘How so, Will?’ Challoner asks, his face rapt.

  ‘You know, sir, that the Antichrist in Rome was disturbed by the upset to the accepted wisdom.’

  ‘As was I, Will. If you take Earth from the centre of creation, where does that leave us as part of God’s design?’

  Hen nods. ‘The third rock circling the sun. Why not the second, or the fourth? It traduces us.’

  ‘And our Lord’s sacrifice. Indeed, Miss Challoner. But Kepler’s elliptical vision does two things. One, it allows us to predict with extraordinary accuracy the movements of the celestial beings. We can anticipate their course across the sky. Second, none of it makes sense without the sun, this perfect ball of fire at the exact centre of the orbits, not near enough to the middle as Copernicus thought. It controls the movement of the celestial bodies and keeps them on their course. And it creates a cosmos that resonates with harmonies and symmetries. Music is harmony. Mathematics is the same. And none of the elegance and beauty that Kepler discovers makes sense without the divine touch of our Lord.’

  He touches the book lying between them on the table with the same type of reverence Ned saves for the Bible.

  ‘You cannot conceive of the beauty of the cosmos, Miss Challoner, both in what we can see with the naked eye, and in the underlying structure that men like Kepler reveal to us.’

  His eyes are shining as he talks, the words tumbling out of him, and Hen is reminded again of Ned when he is caught by a theological idea. Even as the thought makes her warm to him, she is caught by a sudden envy: that Ned and Will can roam the city and have unfettered access to all that is new and exciting. She imagines them sitting in a tavern, trading ideas, surrounded by argument and liveliness. And she must sit
here, waiting for the world’s knowledge to come to her through them, when they can spare the time.

  Just as the envy threatens to overwhelm her, Will smiles, and says: ‘You will understand this passage, I am sure.’

  She allows herself to be pulled back into the easy atmosphere.

  Hen is sitting in the library, reading, when a tap at the window startles her. She looks up, thinking she dreamed it. Another tap. She realizes someone is throwing stones, and she opens the window. Leaning out, she can peer over the garden wall, and sees her father there in the street, an absurd boyish grin spread across his face and a huge package under his arm.

  ‘Ha! Pudding! I knew you would be there! Let me in at the front, will you?’

  ‘Father, what are you about?’

  ‘I will show you soon enough, pudding, but quick now. Harmsworth should be in the cellars – I set him to count the bottles this morning. And the rest of them in the kitchen. Creep around and open the door, there’s a good kitten.’

  She does as he bids and opens the door. He holds a finger to his lips and jerks his head mutely, telling her to follow him. He leads the way through to the library, and she closes the door behind them, giggling with the elaborate mystery of it all.

  He laughs too, and pulls her into a hug. ‘Oh, you will love this, my pudding.’

  ‘What is it, Father?’

  He places the object reverentially on the table, peeling off the wrapping to reveal a long wooden chest. Inside, nestling in a velvet cushion, is a moulded wooden stand, with a round and gleaming brass ring perched at the end.

  ‘Look. Our new microscope. I told you of them, I believe.’

  ‘Father!’

  ‘I know, my pud. A ship I had an interest in docked in the Pool yesterday. The factor had orders to stop, if possible, in Italy, and spend an extraordinary sum on this.’

  He picks it up. ‘I almost can’t bear to look through it. What if it is a disappointment?’

  ‘I’ll look!’ Hen reaches for it.

  ‘You will not! Am I not the master of the house? Am I not the man? Know thy place, kitten. Now, what shall I look at? This pin slides in and out for focus, I believe. But for now, give me your hand.’

  He takes it and holds it on one side of the glass lens suspended in the brass ring of the microscope.

  ‘Well, shall I look?’ he asks.

  She is afraid, suddenly, as if her hand is poised to undergo some terrible ordeal.

  He brings his face down to peer through the other side, moving her hand this way and that, until at last he sighs with satisfaction.

  ‘Oh, my pudding!’ he says, and raises his head from the lens to grin at her.

  ‘Let me, please? Please.’

  He proffers her the scope. Awkwardly, she holds her hand still and peers through the lens. She feels disorientated, dizzy almost. She can see her hand, but not her hand. Pink and fleshy; familiar but unfamiliar. There are whorls and patterns, undreamt of crisscrossings and deep lines laid out like streets.

  ‘What a thing, Father,’ she says, as she raises her head. ‘To see something so ordinary become so extraordinary.’

  ‘Yes. What a thing!’ He laughs again, delighted with his new toy. ‘To see the world entirely through a different eye! Quick, let us find leaves and bugs and hairs and crystals, and anything else you can think of. You go, I shall hide here.’

  ‘Why hide?’

  ‘God’s lid, child. Think of Harmsworth – this would send him into madness. He is strung taut like lute string now – imagine if he knew such sorcery was in the house. Poor man, I would not see him in bedlam. Or us denounced as witches. This must be our secret, puss.’

  It is a secret they share with Will at his next visit. There is something wonderful to Hen in expanding their conspiracy to include him. A sorcerer’s triumvirate. He is, as she guessed he would be, transported with excitement when they show him The Object, as they now refer to it. He wriggles like an eel in his fever to try it out, and his face, when first he brings The Object to bear on a spider pinioned on the sliding focus rod, is almost comically transported.

  Together they study mites, hairs and insects, rhapsodizing about the intricate detail of the infinitesimally small. She likes leaves best; the way their green sheen is revealed to be comprised of an intricate marriage of lines and patterns. She is fascinated by the chasm The Object reveals between things as they seem, and as they are.

  Hen and Will talk, awed, of God’s creation of the impossibly large and the impossibly small. They marvel at man’s ingenuity, that his brain can conceive of these extremes and invent the tools to see them.

  The Object brings into focus other wrinkles of God’s great mystery. Will’s dark hair falls straight down over his forehead as he looks through it. She studies him as he studies whatever they have chosen as the day’s source of wonder. She knows his profile better than his full face, now. She knows the planes of it, and where the light will catch his skin. She is still unable to quite look him straight in the face. She teases herself for this quirk. Will I melt, if I look at him, or turn to salt? Will the thunderbolts rain on me? Yet still she cannot look.

  The opening of the new parliament, and the existence of The Object, both combine to leave her father in a cheerier mood. The king is bound over, this time, to listen to the country’s grievances; the terms of the treaty with the Scots demand it. The prospect of a resolution to the political crisis is lubricating the City’s credit channels. The Exchange reverberates with a new, brash optimism. The City’s swagger is seeping back, and with that comes the promise of profits.

  Challoner invites Ned round for his Sunday meal. Will is there too, unusually silent. He drums out a quiet tattoo on the table, occasionally lifting his face to smile at Hen. In the seconds before she looks away, she registers yet again how she likes the way he smiles; the way his eyes crinkle and he tilts his head to one side.

  Ned and his father manage to be amicable. Both approve of Charles’ decision to forgo a ceremony this time, and slip into Westminster to meet the MPs. Hen watches her father’s jaw clench when Ned talks of the new religious settlement this parliament could bring. He catches her eye then, and she tries to throw a mute appeal at him to be kind. He nods, almost imperceptibly, and lets the building tension deflate. Ned, in his turn, manages to last the whole meal without quoting Gouge.

  The two men find, to their evident pleasure, that there is much that unites them in the discussion about the fiscal grievances. Ned nods vigorously at his father’s summation of Charles’ financial mismanagement, that the measures used to raise revenue during the personal rule are an abuse of royal prerogative. It is fertile ground in which to find agreement; a man would have to be mad to love ship money or the tonnage and poundage tax; a lunatic to think the king in the right in his demands for a forced loan from the City. They agree, too, that all men must hope for the removal of Strafford, the king’s closest adviser. Laud’s name is not mentioned; both are aware that it could spark something vicious.

  Will tells them that there is talk, around the law courts, of bringing Strafford to trial. ‘There is call for him to be impeached, sir,’ he says to Challoner.

  ‘On what grounds?’

  ‘Treason. They say that in his days in charge of Ireland, he grew too close to the papists among the soldiery, and that he advised the king that the army in Ireland could be used against his opponents in England, as well as the Scots.’

  ‘The devil,’ says Ned.

  ‘And did he?’ asks Challoner.

  Will shrugs. ‘Does it matter?’

  ‘How can you say that?’ bursts Ned.

  ‘Ned,’ says Hen, ‘Mr Johnson means it does not matter if it is true – it’s just a ruse to winkle him out from under the king’s protection.’

  Ned looks put out at being contradicted, and she has to work at coaxing him back into a better humour. At last, it works. Ned tells them of a sermon he has read about, preached in the new parliament.

  ‘“These are
the days of shaking,” said the minister. “And the shaking is universal.”’

  They nod, Ned and his father.

  ‘Across the Channel, too,’ says Challoner. ‘Still all on fire across the Continent.’

  ‘It is too much to expect, that such a violent wrench from Rome could settle quickly,’ says Will.

  ‘Aye, and men must fight for their faith, or they are no men at all,’ says Ned.

  His father looks at him, something unreadable in his eyes.

  ‘Why do we always have to talk of fighting?’ says Hen, anxiety colouring her tone. It’s Will she’s looking at, not her brother.

  Her father’s thoughtful gaze flits between the three of them.

  Afterwards, when Will and Ned have set off into the darkness, Challoner takes her to one side, gripping her arm and pulling her close to him.

  ‘Henrietta, darling child,’ he says, pushing her hair back from her face. He looks full into her eyes, and she turns away, knowing what is coming.

  He is merciless. ‘You know Will is the son of a country parson? You know his father has a brood of children – girls at that – and no money? You know that it will take him ten years, or more, to establish himself and start to make sufficient money to keep a household? You know that Will’s head is so full of stars that the law has trouble gaining any purchase? You know that I have wealth, but not enough to divert too much away from the business if Ned is to inherit a manageable concern? And then there is Sam. You know then, Henrietta, that it is impossible?’

  She pulls herself away, feigning hauteur because she doesn’t know how else to react. ‘I do not know, Father, what you are talking about. I have done nothing to make you talk like this.’

  Now, she thinks, I must flounce out, because that is what I should do. So she flounces, and Challoner watches her go, and in the empty room his usual expression of sardonic amusement is replaced by something naked and sad.