The School of Night

by Louis Bayard

  “How?” I whispered.

  “Oh,” said Clarissa. “I took a self-defense course once. Works best when least expected.”

  “So what next, Femme Nikita?”

  “Well, we should probably have Agent Mooney lie down on his stomach.”

  Nothing but cheer irradiated the Visigoth’s face as he palmed his way into a fully prone position. You might have thought he was glad for the rest.

  “What do you have, Henry?” Clarissa’s voice was low and hard. “A belt, maybe?”

  “I’ve got a belt.”

  “Then—”

  Half exasperated, she swept her hands in the direction of the prone man. I knelt by him and drew his hands behind his back. Heard his voice percolating up from the ground.

  “Listen, mate.”

  I wrapped my belt around his wrist. One loop … two …

  “You’re not even in this,” he murmured. “No one’s got a beef against you.”

  I cinched the belt tight. Tucked the end into the buckle.

  “See, right now?” he said. “You are aggravating the situation. You know that, don’t you?”

  “Personally,” said Clarissa, “I think the situation is getting better.”

  She knelt down, unknotted the red tie that dangled from Agent Mooney’s neck, and used it to bind his ankles. So lost was she in her labor I’m not sure she even heard his monologue.

  “Listen to me. The both of you, you’ve been marked now, see? I’m just saying you leave things like this, you walk away, I’m not responsible for what happens later, eh? You capeesh? No, really, are you—”

  It took a kick in the flank from Clarissa to stop his flow.

  “Sorry,” she said. “I’m just trying to find your phone.”

  It was an iPhone 3GS, with cheetah wallpaper. I dug it out of his pocket and scrolled through the list of contacts, looking for Bernard Styles or Halldor. Nothing.

  So I carried it back to the car and set it with great care in the direct path of the front tire.

  “Okay then,” said Clarissa.

  With her left foot, she gave Agent Mooney a single push … and watched him roll into the culvert, accelerating as he went. I give him this: He was silent the whole way, although I’ve no doubt his mind was noisy with revenge.

  Through all this activity, Alonzo never even left the car. (He was a man accustomed to outsourcing.) And when Clarissa and I climbed into the front seat, his only remark was:

  “I am waiting.”

  “For what?” I asked.

  “The praise due my thespian efforts. Garrick and Kean would have wept with envy. Shakespeare would have written whole historical cycles for me.”

  “You were great,” said Clarissa negligently, inclining her seat toward the steering wheel. “Henry, they don’t have a GPS. You think you can get us in the right direction?”

  “I think so.”

  “Then off we go, kids.”

  She rolled the car just far enough forward to hear the crunch of Agent Mooney’s iPhone. Then she leaned into me and kissed me hard and square. Her lips tasted of sweat and copper and airline chicken.

  “Mm,” I said.

  “Mm,” she said.

  “Um, hello?” cried Alonzo from the back seat. “Bonnie? Clyde? We’ve got business to do.”

  ISLEWORTH, ENGLAND 1603

  34

  AMAZING THAT HE ever thought her plain.

  Was it the smallness of her mouth? He had yet to see it in all its moods: damp with curiosity, plumped by humor, folding down in moments of highest concentration. He had yet to see how her rounded chin chimed with her round fern-green eyes. The larger music of her: that Roman nose and the tracery of Delft-blue veins along her temple and the hint of power in her corded forearms. He recalls once more—how can he not?—those lines of Sidney’s.

  Not at the first sight, nor with a dribbed shot,

  Loue gaue the wound, which, while I breathe, will bleede;

  But knowne worth did in tract of time proceed,

  Till by degrees, it had full conquest got.

  Known worth, yes. And now, being fully conquered by it, what may he do?

  They carry on as before; they must. But the wound has changed his manner toward her. He is sullen one minute, snappish the next. Most disagreeable when most distracted by the green-apple scent of her.

  —Come! You take too long about it.

  —Can you not write faster?

  —My light is blocked!

  She bears it all with great mildness.

  —I am very sorry, Master.

  This only incenses him further.

  —Why must you call me Master? There is no call.

  —As you wish, sir.

  —Sir neither.

  —What shall I call you then?

  He has given it precious little thought himself.

  —It seems to me my friends have called me always Tom.

  But he can see at once this is too great a liberty for her. And now he is too late to correct it. Denied the old form of address, she will be forced to call him nothing at all.

  * * *

  The two of them still gravitate toward the dark, but hide though they might, the summer days come and find them: stretch further into the evening, visit a few minutes earlier each morning. There is a wisdom in Nature, after all, that no mortal can resist. So, after some discussion, they agree to devote their afternoons to outings.

  Nothing of a common cast, he is firm on this point. No theater or bearbaiting, no cockfighting. If they are to go out in the world, they must take something away for their pains. And so they study the dispersal patterns of the swans around Chiswick Eyot. They track tides at Brentford Ait, they use an astrolabe to take latitude readings from London Bridge, they track the refraction of sunlight at the fogbound Blackfriars Stairs.

  In the second week of June, wild news comes from Greenwich. A monstrous fish, discovered in Rainham Creek, has been chased upriver with harping irons and fish spears, getting as far as the Isle of Dogs before beaching on an outlying shoal.

  No one can explain why the fish should have wandered so far from sea or why the fishermen pursuing it should have forborne to kill it on the spot. But their charity has won its reward: a steady current of gawkers, lured by promise of a great sea beast and willing to pay a halfpenny each to glimpse it.

  Seeing how much they stand to make, the fishermen decide to charge an additional penny for the privilege of touching the beast. Margaret and Harriot are only too glad to pay. By the time they clamber down the embankment, the tide has gone out, and everything above the creature’s tail lies starkly revealed. The white belly, the sickle-shaped fin, the escarpment of the head. Against such mass Harriot can only oppose numbers.

  —One and twenty in length, by my guess. Sixteen in height. Girth I should reckon at a dozen, perhaps thirteen.…

  But they have brought no paper or pen or inkwell, and Margaret is too busy anyway, circling the great fish. Abashed, he follows her, pausing each time she pauses, studying each gash in the creature’s underbelly and head … compelled at every moment to explain.

  —No doubt it has collided with boats during its journey. Or else it has been dragged along the riverbed. To judge from my own soundings, the Thames is no more than two fathoms in any of its oxbows.…

  She just keeps walking.

  —Extraordinary, is it not, Margaret? That it should be breathing, I mean, after all this time. I have never known a fish with such a capacity for—

  And then the skin of the fish’s head wrinkles open to reveal an eye.

  Lashless, dry, veined … appallingly small. For a few long seconds, it shudders in its socket, then sinks out of sight. And with that, everything seems to change, though not in any way he can identify.

  Margaret lifts her head. She murmurs:

  —Upriver.

  —Pardon?

  —It was looking upriver. That is most curious, is it not? Why not down? To where it came from?

  �
��Well, I suspect it had no choice in the matter. This is—this is simply the position in which it ran aground.

  She shakes her head.

  —It must have had business up here.

  —Dear me, how should a fish have—more likely, it was addled by some magnetic shift in the sea tides. Perhaps connected to the motion of the stars. I myself have long noted the correlation between the orbital motions of Mars and … and …

  Her lips fold down, just as they always do when she is concentrating. Only she is not concentrating on him.

  —What if we pushed it? she asks.

  —Pushed it?

  —Back in the water.

  —My dear Margaret …

  —It might then find its way back.

  —’Tis against all reason. The beast weighs well above two tons. We would want five score men simply to move it, and even then, the creature would have no, no strength remaining for its journey.…

  He is being rational. And when has rationality ever felt so inadequate?

  Margaret lays one hand on the fish’s sun-bleached flank. Rests it there. Then, in a voice of soft wonder, she says:

  —How late it has grown. We must be getting back.

  * * *

  The great fish’s life is prolonged briefly, by a late-evening shower. The next morning, at three minutes past seven, it breathes its last. Another day’s worth of gawkers file past. Then the beast is hewn into pieces and boiled in cauldrons for oil.

  * * *

  In the days following, Harriot finds himself more and more persuaded that something has changed between him and Margaret. Lacking any means to verify his theory, he catches himself spying on her when she isn’t looking, constructing theses for her silences. Only in brave moments will he hazard direct queries.

  —Are you happy here, Margaret?

  —Yes.

  —I mean content.

  —Yes, of course.

  —You do not long for some other occupation?

  —This suits quite well.

  The words are meant to reassure, he knows that, but would Astrophel and Stella have spoken like this?

  And how exactly did Sidney’s lovers become Thomas Harriot’s paradigms?

  Something is softening in him, no doubt. More often than he would like, he tumbles back to his past—his childhood—a habit that becomes more pronounced with the approach of Midsummer’s Eve. It was the one night of the year when his father danced. (The Bishop of Chester’s jig, the only dance he knew.) It was the one night when Harriot felt safe in his father’s company. And now, if he closes his eyes, he can actually feel the blast of the old bonfires. He can see himself, no more than six or seven, tossing in scraps of kindling and gathering birch boughs and pinning larkspur and Saint-John’s-wort over the door lintel.

  In due course, June 24 arrives, and Harriot seems to unravel before it. He blots figures, breaks vials, asks Margaret again and again to repeat herself. At last he wheels away from the worktable.

  —I cannot!

  To which she says what she always says.

  —As you wish.

  But there is an element of grace to those words now. Freed from his duties, he rounds on her and, in a giddy voice, cries:

  —How shall it be if we take a holiday?

  —Tonight, do you mean?

  —Yes.

  She is caught off guard, he can see that. It is even obscurely pleasing to him.

  —As you wish.

  From the pantry, they take a flagon of hard Devon cider, some walnuts, slabs of Dutch cheese. Harriot fills his pipe; Margaret lights it for him in the hearth coals. They step through the door, and the summer air that greets them stops them as surely as a great northern wind.

  Margaret’s voice is strangely faint.

  —Where shall we go?

  He beckons her to follow. They pass through a gate, around scarlet oaks and white poplars, past a sward of Michaelmas daisies, past a nightingale garden … right up to the Bath-stone façade of the great house itself. With a sly smile, Harriot raises his arm and points toward the very tip of the northwest turret.

  —Up there?

  —Naturally.

  —All the way, do you mean?

  —You may take my arm if the steps are too many.

  A faint starchiness to her reply:

  —I need no help, thank you.

  Many of the estate’s servants have been given their liberty tonight, so there is no one to stop them, no one to inquire where they are bound. As they climb the spiraling steps, the only sound that follows them is the scrape of their shoes.

  They come to a stout wooden door, girded with black iron. From his cloak, Harriot removes a key, fits it into the lock and presses his full weight against the door. It groans open, and in the next moment he and Margaret are standing atop Syon House.

  And what a difference is made by their elevation! From here, they can see bonfires to the south and west. Cattle browsing in the water meadows. The sun’s pomegranate rays swimming through the willows.

  Margaret leans into one of the tower’s crenellations, bows her head.

  —Are you weary? he asks.

  —No, I am only recalling my youth. My mother warned us to take great care on Midsummer’s Eve lest our souls be coaxed from our bodies.

  —God’s blood …

  —The best way to keep safe was to stay awake all the night, with others about you. If you were so rash as to set yourself alongside a churchyard, you might see lost souls flying past, and one of them might snatch you up and bear you along.

  —Then we shall put it to a test. This very night.

  —Oh, no! I have done it. When I was fourteen years, my sister and I sneaked out to Saint Botolph’s. Blankets we brought, and we lay down by the children’s graves because we thought they were most in want of company. I must have fallen asleep, for I was wakened by my sister’s scream. All white in the face she was. Pointing toward the lych-gate. I saw it, Margaret! I saw it!

  —A soul?

  —Yes, she took it first for a puff of smoke. But there was something so very sad about its passage, she said, that she knew it to be some wretch’s spirit.

  The smile fades slowly from her lips.

  —My father died before another year was out. To this day, my sister believes it was his ghost she saw that night. Inspecting its future resting place.

  Harriot draws down a draught of tobacco, stares out across the fields and forests.

  —Is he abroad tonight, do you think? Your father?

  She makes no answer, and he does not press her. Silence folds them around. The sun gives off its last rays, stars bleed from the dusk, and the day’s scents—clover and hay and horse and sheep manure—form threads around them.

  —Ah!

  Margaret lightly slaps her cheek.

  —I have quite forgot! Wait here!

  She is gone ten minutes, and when she returns, it is well and truly night, and she is nearly out of breath from the climb, and whatever she has brought with her is dangling now by her side, like a vestigial limb. The moonlight is just strong enough to call out its shape: a cylinder, familiar in its ratios, wrapped in a green hide.

  His perspective trunk.

  —I wondered where it had gone.

  —Yes, I have used it most grievous …

  She presses her fist to her sternum, waiting for the air to come back.

  —It looks no worse for the wear, Margaret.

  —The better, I hope. Do you recall? You told me that a—a different configuration of—of convex and concave—might yield a larger power of magnification?

  —My thoughts have tended that way.…

  —In my free hours, I have subjected your theory to—to parlous trials. Drawing upon the sine law, I have altered the angles—the lens diameters, as well. It would be tedious to limn every detail, but after much error and confusion, I—I conceive I have raised its magnification by a power or two. But you must be the judge.

  He takes the instrument from h
er. Raises it to his eye. Arcs it across the sky.

  —Margaret, this is …

  —Yes?

  —It is quite extraordinary!

  —Do you think?

  —Oh, by my faith! Everything is most agreeably enlarged! The resolution and the—the grain …

  A laugh escapes his throat as the stars swarm toward him.

  —All my old friends! Shining like new again. There is Libra … there is Ursa Minor … there is—

  The moon, he is about to say. Only it sits in a different quadrant of sky.

  Back and forth he swings the glass, unable to credit his senses. Two moons. One like the moon of old. One paler and smaller, ready at any moment to shrink back into darkness …

  God have mercy.

  —Venus.

  He whispers the name. He whispers it again.

  —Venus …

  * * *

  For many centuries, men have spoken of Venus’s phases, but few have ever glimpsed them with the naked eye. So few indeed that Harriot has long since ceased to believe they exist.

  And now, in a trice, legend has become truth. And there lies Venus. Stuck against the heavens’ blotter, like the clipping of someone’s thumbnail.

  To his shock, he feels his eyes soften. Not with the old dampness, which tasted of pitch and gall, but something more lucid.

  Already he is muttering his excuses.

  —The smoke, I think … blowing crossriver …

  She takes his hand and looks at him. And what a relief to see how free of pity her eyes are. All he can say is:

  —Thank you, Margaret.

  And then he kisses her. And those lips that, in his blindness, he once believed too small … how they swell to his touch. How they taste of her.

  35

  LOVER.

  Nothing about it grows any clearer, any less strange with usage. How sensible, he thinks, were the old Romans. Knowing how elusive their quarry was, they came at it with a battalion of verbs. Amare, they called it. And diligere and delectare and placere and observare.

  Where in that linguistic stew lie his feelings? Amare, yes, he has known some of that. When he first went to London as a young man, he frequented the Cardinal’s Hat, where brisk and practiced women asked for their eighteenpence up front and arranged themselves on tear sheets and unbuttoned themselves just far enough to get the act done.