Beyond the Mapped Stars

by Rosalyn Eves

  Alice sighs and makes room for me on the seat beside her. “I only hope you know what you’re doing.”

  chapter nineteen

  Tuesday, July 23, 1878

  Denver, Colorado

  Six days until eclipse

  The next morning, Frances continues her tactic of giving the worst of the messes to me during our shift, and as the hotel is full to bursting with people drawn to town by the impending eclipse, I have a lot to do.

  We come to Samuel’s floor. I’m carting an armful of linens from the room next door when Samuel’s door opens.

  “Elizabeth!” he says, pleasure lighting his face. The tips of his eyelashes look gold in the morning light. I never noticed before.

  Frances, coming out of the room behind me, casts me a sharp look.

  “Go on ahead,” I tell her. “I’ll be there in a moment.”

  Frances mutters something under her breath as she passes.

  I set the linens on the floor, stretching.

  “How was your visit to Miss Mitchell?” Samuel asks.

  “Miss Mitchell invited me to come back. She says she may have work for me.” In my enthusiasm, I grasp one of his hands in both of mine. My thumb slides across the rough calluses of his palm, sending a prickling all the way up my arm. I try to ignore the sensation.

  His fingers tighten around mine. “That’s wonderful! Though no more than you deserve.” He peers at me closely. “What is it? Why don’t you seem more pleased?”

  Samuel is too damn perceptive sometimes. I pull my hand free and fold my arms across my chest. After the high of yesterday’s meeting, I spent the night thinking about all the ways I fall short of the women in Miss Mitchell’s circle. And my discomfort is not helped by the way I exaggerated my own experience. “Miss Mitchell and her students are all so educated, and I lack their training. There’s this chasm between what I want and what I know, and I don’t know how to cross it.”

  “Why not?” Samuel asks, ever practical. “You’re the smartest person I know, and there are schools everywhere, if that’s what you want. You could start somewhere like the Brigham Young Academy in Provo, and then apply for schools back east. You’d not be the first Mormon woman to go to college. You just take one step at a time.”

  Not the first Mormon woman. He’s right, but he says this so casually, as though it’s an easy thing to be a different kind of Mormon woman than the only kind I’ve ever known.

  One step, I think, breathing slowly. I’m not afraid of hard work; it’s only unfamiliar work I quail from. But I can do this. After my shift is over, I can stop by the train station to see if there’s any word of the missing telescope, then perhaps find a library. And tomorrow…

  “Elizabeth?” Samuel says. “I’ve got to go. But I will see you this afternoon.”

  I blink at him. “This afternoon?”

  “At Miss Stevens’s? We promised to sit for her painting. Will you walk over with me?”

  “I’ll meet you there,” I say. “I’ve got errands to run after my shift.”

  Samuel nods, unruffled. “See you then.”

  I take my load downstairs, then return to find Frances beating a rug rather savagely.

  “Took you long enough,” she says.

  “Samuel’s an old friend.”

  “Old friend or no, you shouldn’t be fraternizing with the guests. Mrs. Segura keeps a strict house and don’t hold with nonsense between staff and guests. I’ve seen women fired for as much.”

  Frances hands me the rug and stalks off.

  She means to threaten me, but her threat holds no teeth. So long as Alice and her family support me, there’s not much Frances can do to harm me.

  * * *

  * * *

  The Denver and Rio Grande station is quieter than it was last time I was here. A few passengers wait for the next train, but I have no trouble staying out of their way as I enter the station and flag down a porter.

  “Excuse me, where would I seek for lost luggage?”

  He waves me toward a door in the far wall. I’m not quite to the office, when I pause. Two of Miss Mitchell’s students—the dark-haired Miss Culbertson and one of the young women who came in as we were leaving—are standing in a shadowed corner nearby. The second woman looks distressed, color high in her fair cheeks. Miss Culbertson presses her hand, then brushes a honey-colored curl away from the other girl’s face. Something about the moment seems rather intimate, and I look away.

  I pretend to study a rail map on the wall near the office, trying to decide what to do. If the students are here, they must have just asked about the telescope, and so there’s not much purpose in my doing the same.

  Footsteps sound behind me, and a gentle touch lands on my shoulder. I turn to find the second young woman smiling rather shyly at me. “I beg your pardon, but I do believe you were at Miss Mitchell’s yesterday? In all the fuss, we weren’t introduced. I’m Cora Harrison, graduate student in astronomy.”

  “Elizabeth Bertelsen,” I say, holding out my hand.

  She shakes my hand and smiles, betraying a dimple in her lower right cheek. “What brings you to this sorry corner of the city?”

  My cheeks heat. “Same as you, I expect. I thought I might check on Miss Mitchell’s telescope, perhaps save you a journey if it was here.”

  Miss Culbertson strolls up beside her friend, eyeing me coolly. “You don’t need to trouble yourself, Miss Bertelsen. We are perfectly capable of addressing the problem ourselves.”

  Miss Harrison’s cheeks flush a delicate pink. “I’m sure Miss Bertelsen only meant to be kind, Emma.”

  “I think Miss Bertelsen means to ingratiate herself with Miss Mitchell,” Miss Culbertson says. “And our party is just fine as it is.”

  The blonde smiles at her, dimples flashing. “Well, and is that a crime? You can hardly blame her, when you did the same when you first met Miss Mitchell.”

  “I did not ingratiate myself,” Miss Culbertson says.

  Miss Harrison laughs. “No, you were merely your usual brilliant, blunt self, and Miss Mitchell, seeing your merit at once, requisitioned your aid.”

  “If you mean that I begged shamelessly,” Miss Culbertson says, grinning at her friend, “you might be closer to the truth.”

  I don’t mean to interrupt their banter, but the words burst out of me. “You’re lucky, you know.”

  Both women look at me.

  “To have studied with Miss Mitchell, to have families that can afford to send you to a school like Vassar. I haven’t had your opportunities—the nearest college is days away, and my folks can’t afford it. But I want to be an astronomer, and these few days before the eclipse might be my one chance to learn from someone like Miss Mitchell.”

  Miss Harrison says, “I’m from Denver. Vassar is a sacrifice for me too. But I understand what you mean.”

  I really need to stop making assumptions about people. I turn to Miss Culbertson. “Yes, I am trying to make myself useful—to ingratiate myself, as you said. But can you blame me?”

  “No,” Miss Culbertson says. Something flashes in her hazel eyes. “I can’t blame you for that.”

  Is it only my guilty imagination that hears a slight emphasis on “that”?

  Miss Culbertson and Miss Harrison exchange glances. Miss Harrison smiles, and Miss Culbertson throws her hands up in defeat. “Fine. Since Miss Mitchell does not seem to object to you and Cora likes you, you can help us.”

  “I can check for the telescope again tomorrow, at this same time,” I offer, hoping I do not sound too eager.

  “Thank you,” Miss Harrison says.

  Miss Culbertson says, “I hope you have better luck tomorrow than we have had today.”

  After they leave, I pursue my second errand. A few questions to a porter tells me that the library, lacking funds for independent operati
on, has recently been relocated to a wing of the public high school on Arapahoe Street, some six blocks away.

  The summer day is windy, clouds tearing across the sky, but I make the walk in good time. I’ve a nagging feeling that I’m forgetting something, but it’s likely only anxious excitement over the prospect of helping Miss Mitchell’s group.

  And for that, I need more resources.

  The high school is a magnificent brick building: three tall stories with a small clock tower at the top. It dwarfs its neighbors, mostly houses and other residences. Daunted by the imposing front doors, I nearly turn away. But I think of Miss Mitchell, gather my courage, and march up the stone stairs.

  The library is a single room in the south wing, but the whole room is devoted to books. Shelves upon shelves, filled with perhaps a thousand or more volumes. I’ve read about marvels like the burned library at Alexandria, but I’ve never seen so many books in one place before. The room smells, intoxicatingly, of musty paper and ink and ideas.

  A prim older woman with silver hair coiled neatly about her head directs me to the astronomy section, where I run my finger across dozens of spines. I could read for weeks—years—and never run out of material. Here, there’s no need to hide volumes beneath my bed or squirrel them outside to peruse on a sun-warmed rock. Here, I may study in a sunny nook overlooking the street and watch the high school students as they pour from the school, talking excitedly to one another.

  I pull a volume from the shelves, William Chauvenet’s A Manual of Spherical and Practical Astronomy, and flip to the table of contents. Finding that there’s an entire section on eclipses, I pull up a chair at a table, and dive in. His explanation of the different kinds of eclipses—solar, lunar, and occultation of planets by our moon—is easy enough to follow.

  But then he presents this:

  437

  GENERAL PREDICTIONS.

  NS. Let S′, M′, be the centres of the sun and moon when at their least true distance, and put

  β = the moon’s latitude at conjunction = SM,

  I = the inclination of the moon’s orbit to the ecliptic,

  λ = the quotient of the moon’s motion in longitude divided by the sun’s,

  Σ = the least true distance = S′M′,

  γ = the angle SMS′.

  We may regard NMS as a plane triangle; and, drawing M′P perpendicular to NS, we find

  SS′ = β tan γ

  SP = λβ tan γ

  and hence

  S′P = β (λ – 1) tan γ

  M′P = β – λβ tan γ tan I

  Σ2 = β2 [(λ – 1)2 tan2 γ + (1 – λ tan I tan γ)2]

  I do not know what half of the notations represent. I read and reread it, but it might as well be a foreign language. Miss Mitchell sets great store by her students’ knowledge of mathematics—this seems just one more sign of the ways I am wrong for this work. With a long sigh, I shut up this book and pull down another. This second book, happily, is less mathematical, and I lose myself in explanations and diagrams, and it’s not until the clock atop the high school chimes the hour—five distinct chimes—that I remember.

  Alice.

  The sitting.

  At four o’clock.

  I hurry to replace the book and dash along the hallway, down the stone steps. The high school is closer to the Stevenses’ home than the Trans-Oceana, but it is still not close.

  I begin to run.

  Folk stare at me as I race through the residential streets. How could I have forgotten? I only meant to stop briefly at the station, at the library. And then I got caught up in ideas. Maybe Mama is right that my dreams are dangerous things. They make me selfish. Rachel’s pale, wet face flashes in my mind and I run faster, my skirts whipping about my legs.

  I arrive at the Stevenses’ home sweating and winded. The maid who answers the door at my knock wrinkles her nose at me, but lets me in. “Miss Alice is waiting in her studio, miss.”

  I thank her and scramble up the stairs. A low murmur of voices floats out from the studio. Thank heavens. Samuel is still here. I scratch at the door, not wanting to startle Alice, and at her “Come in!” I do.

  Samuel is sitting rather primly in a high-backed wooden chair, his hair slicked back from his forehead and his beard neatly trimmed. A few feet from him, Alice stands before an easel bearing a white canvas, a circular piece of wood with paints on it held easily in her left hand. She’s blocked out the shape of Samuel and the chair in a watery-looking brown. A matching high-backed chair sits empty beside Samuel.

  Alice is clearly upset, her lips pinched together and her eyes narrow. Samuel raises his eyebrows at me.

  “I’m so sorry,” I say. “I thought I had time to stop by the library and then there were all those books about the eclipse and I started reading—and then I just forgot.”

  Alice sighs. “When I promised to help you study astronomy, I didn’t exactly mean at the expense of my own work. But as someone who has accidentally painted through dinner more times than I can count, I do understand.”

  I flush gratefully. “Thank you. It won’t happen again.”

  She gestures at the open chair. “Sit down.”

  Samuel leans toward me. “Fashionably late, eh? City life is already rubbing off on you.”

  “Oh, be quiet,” I say, just as Alice tells him to sit still.

  For a while, there’s not much sound except for the swish of Alice’s brush and the rustle of clothes as Samuel or I shift. I’m not sure if we are allowed to talk, or if that would spoil the lines of the painting.

  But as Alice settles back to her work, she starts to ask questions about growing up in a small town. Samuel tells her about life in Monroe, and about the time he and his brother set up a bear trap on the mountain. “We rigged up a gun to go off soon as the bear triggered the trap. We weren’t halfway back to our camp, where we were watching our sheep, when the gun went off.”

  He pauses, drawing out the tension. “My brother wanted to go back and check the trap, but I said, ‘Not on your life. Either that bear is dead and can wait till morning, or it’s not, and if it’s not, no way in hell am I going to face it.’ ”

  Alice and I laugh.

  “We never did find out what tripped the trap,” Samuel says. “It was empty when we went back.”

  “I begin to see why Elizabeth likes you,” Alice says. “You’re funny.”

  “I like making people laugh,” Samuel says with a shrug. “I like to see them happy.”

  I’ve spent my whole life taking care of other people, because I was supposed to, because I was told that’s what God wanted. What would it be like to take care of them simply because I wanted to?

  “You should meet my brother, Will,” Alice says. “He’s one of the funniest people I know.” She tells us about a time that one of Will’s friends broke his leg and was housebound for a month. “Every day, Will arranged for a different ‘surprise’ visitor. One time it was a grocer, who was rather put out that Will’s friend didn’t need one hundred pounds of turnips. One time it was a preacher, who delivered a blistering sermon on hell and damnation. Several times, it was Will himself in costume. Never at the same time of day. The next time Will showed up, his friend would cuss him out, and then laugh. I think it cheered him no end.”

  Samuel grins. “You’re right. I like him already.”

  “You should stay for dinner,” Alice says, and Samuel accepts.

  * * *

  * * *

  After brief introductions, and the hasty addition of another plate, we take our seats around the table, with Samuel beside me and Will and Alice across from us.

  Mr. and Mrs. Stevens begin by asking Samuel questions: where he’s from, what his family does.

  “And you work with your father? Keeping up the family business?” Mr. Stevens asks, wit
h a significant glance at Will, who ducks his head to study his plate intently.

  Samuel catches the sideways glance and says lightly, “Only because I’m not ambitious enough to find my own work, sir. ‘Ambition should be made of sterner stuff.’ Truth be told, I think my father finds my efforts to introduce flourishes to our work trying.”

  I fiddle with my napkin in my lap. I didn’t know this about Samuel, and it pricks me that Mr. Stevens has learned something of Samuel in five minutes that I didn’t learn in more than five days of traveling with him. I should stop assuming that simply because Samuel does not volunteer information, he has nothing to say.

  Mr. Stevens smiles at him. “Ah, Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. But if Brutus is to be our measure, I think it’s as well not to have such ambitions. I see nothing wrong in taking the work your parents began and improving upon it.”

  Alice, after a swift look at Will, asks Samuel to retell the bear story that made her laugh earlier. The tension around the table eases—even Will laughs.

  “I never thought I was much scared of animals,” Will says, “but that encounter we had alongside the tracks has changed my mind.”

  Mrs. Stevens looks faintly alarmed, Samuel intrigued. Will launches into the story of the elk and her calf, building it up as a mysterious noise, then the animals erupting from the bush.

  “When I finished yelling, I waved my arms at the blasted thing, trying to distract it from the girls. But it would not be distracted. Luckily, they had the sense to hide, and the only thing hurt was Alice’s hat, with a big old hoofprint through the middle.”

  Mrs. Stevens fans herself. “Phew. I’m glad no one was hurt. But why am I only now hearing this?”

  Samuel laughs and says, “You’re a braver man than me. I imagine I’d have run the other way.”

  Will grins at him. “I very nearly did.”

  “I’m glad you had the sense to protect your sister,” Mr. Stevens says, and Will’s smile dies.