The Blind Astronomer's Daughter

by John Pipkin

  “Mr. Ainsworth?” Finn calls out again.

  He is about to turn back when a section of the wall seems to fall inward, and he lurches forward to catch the iron panel but his arms sweep through empty space. It is only the darkness mocking me, he thinks, and then in the next flash of lightning he sees Caroline Ainsworth standing before him. He wipes his hand over his face, certain that it cannot be so, that the storm and the shadows in the tube are playing tricks with his eyes, and when she speaks—Finn? Is it you?—he thinks that this, too, is only in his head.

  “The note was not my father’s,” she says, barely loud enough to be heard above the howl of wind and rain.

  Finn’s stomach tightens. He wonders what grim news would bring her here in Arthur Ainsworth’s stead. Has the man determined, at last, to abandon this futile work? And what will be done then about the debt they still owe? He thinks of Owen and Moira sitting in the road with their few belongings tied in a sack.

  “Is Mr. Ainsworth not coming, then?”

  “I am sorry for this,” she says. In the darkness her steps echo against the iron hull.

  Finn leans back against the cold metal. He knows what will come next. He will be told to abandon the mirror and he and Owen and Moira will be sent from their home. But there is no need for her to apologize. She has caused none of it. Only accident and circumstance have kept them from lives that might have converged long before this, or perhaps not at all.

  “What is it, Miss Ainsworth, that you have to be sorry for?”

  “For the deception,” she says, moving closer, “and for this—”

  Before she can say anything more, the tunnel erupts with the incan- descence of a thousand stars, the light funneling around them, and he sees for a second her dark hair wet and matted to her face and her eyes wide from the night and lit from within and then the thunderclap rumbles through the iron tube and she falls upon him, push- ing into him with unexpected force, and it is difficult to keep his balance in this dark space where he can no longer reckon earth from sky. He draws her closer, stunned now by her impossible lightness, worried that her bones will not bear the weight of his wanting, and he feels her clenched hand at the knot of his jaw and her soft cheek brushing his. He wants to call her Siobhan, as if to lay claim to her past and future, but he knows that truth of that sort is a malleable thing.

  “Caroline,” he whispers, and he hopes she does not hear the question in it.

  She smells of iron and earth and heat, and she presses against him even harder, as though she meant to propel them both through the dark and empty and seemingly endless length of the giant telescope, and before he can disbelieve the moment they are already apart and he cannot tell if she has pulled away or if he has let her go. And when he reaches for her again in the darkness of the empty tube, she is already gone.

  Chapter 22

  THE GREAT MIRROR

  A doctor arrives from Dublin and there is no point in his coming. He is a young man—too young, it seems, to appreciate the trials that a body must endure over the long days of living—and he mumbles his name and talks quietly to himself while he holds a dripping candle close to Arthur Ainsworth’s eyes and then he says too loudly that there is nothing to be done. The damage cannot be reversed. Any sight that yet remains will soon darken as the scorched tissue covers itself with scars. The young doctor mutters something more and then tells them there are some things a man is not meant to look upon.

  Caroline brings milk and cinnamon to ease her father’s headaches and help him rest, and after a while he asks for ink and paper and begins a furious scrawling amid the tangled bedclothes. She tries to comfort him, but he says that she cannot possibly understand what he sees now. He insists that the great mirror must be finished so that she can see it too.

  And Caroline’s concern for him grows into something more, a fear that he has passed on to her some portion of his madness along with his yearning to know the depths of the sky. It had not been her plan to fall upon Finnegan O’Siodha inside the tube of the giant telescope. She had gone to explain what her father had done to himself and how they must finish the mirror, for it seemed that his life depended upon it, and she could not imagine what else she should do. She has known no other purpose than this endless scouring of the heavens. In her memory she has already confused the order of events. Had Finn pulled her to himself or had she tripped on a seam in the iron? Had the flash and roar of the storm so startled her that she leapt into his arms? And was there a kiss, or was the touch of his lips an invention of her dreams? She had run through the tube and out into the rain, and she could not tell if Finn had pushed her away, or if she had recoiled from her own recklessness, or if some other force governing mass and motion had driven them apart, a counter to the gravity of her wanting.

  When she goes to the workhouse the next day, she stands in the door, stiff and distant, one arm close at her side and the other folded against her chest, as though their encounter in the telescope’s tube has not taken place.

  “We must finish it,” she tells Finn in a voice as stern as she can muster. She will not be sent away this time. She knows as much about the casting of the mirror from reading books on optics and telescopes as Finn knows about handling hot metal and she does not care what he might say about it.

  Finn leans back against the table where he has been working and he settles his hands at his hips. “Is it true that Mr. Ainsworth is ill?”

  Caroline bites her lip. “What remains to be found is still waiting for us, whether my father can see it or not. So we must have no more delays.”

  Finn looks to the fire, to the cauldron, back to Caroline.

  “It cannot be rushed. The casting must be done with care. And the polishing—”

  “I know all of this,” she says, flicking her elbow. “We will work together, and so prevent further mishap.”

  Finn does not argue or repeat his warnings or tell her to keep her distance. His gaze does not drift toward her arm. He looks only at her eyes, and nods.

  “A few days more,” he says, and he reaches behind him and pulls a rag over the twisted framework of metal rods piled on the table, and before she can ask him how they will fit into the telescope’s design, he turns his back to her and says, “There is nothing for you to do until then. As soon as the speculum metals are ready to pour, I will send for you.”

  When the time arrives she is already at the door, alerted by the black smoke from the tremendous fire he has built, a furious heat to melt enough tin and copper to gather starlight from millions of miles away. Caroline stands close and watches the molten speculum metal seethe in the pair of cauldrons, as though the fire had unleashed some violent light trapped within. The heat of the fire is withering, and the air is so thick with fumes that Caroline finds it difficult to breathe. Finn cautions her to step back from the flames. He rolls his sleeves and his shirt is damp and matted to his arms and chest, and Caroline feels the sweat running down her neck and even in its sling her dull arm awakens to the danger. The cauldrons glow like twin suns specked with impurities that flare and disappear, and Finn frowns and says that the metal is not ready to pour. He piles more charcoal on the fire and says he has never worked with so large an amount of metal at once, and so they must take extra care that they have everything right, since there will be no turning back once they begin.

  They work into the night, waiting for the metal to be ready. Finn tends the fire and Caroline measures the mold a final time, and they both sense the urgency, for they know that if they fail there will be no more attempts. And in this moment it seems to Caroline that every moment that has come before has led her to this. Her father has always urged patience, even as they watched chance favor the efforts of other men, but now at last she is making something happen, and she thinks that after this she will never again waste her time in watching. She pictures the days ahead, imagines how she and Finn will work together to polish the huge mirror, and she is overwhelmed by the thought of it. When the speculum metals are finally rea
dy to pour, Finn rubs his eyes, red with exhaustion, and she helps him move the mold into place while her curled arm tingles in sympathy for the labor required of the other.

  They fit the top half of the mold into place and screw it tight. The mold squats on iron legs, a large hole at the center. Finn wheels the first cauldron near with his hands wrapped in large padded gloves, and he turns the iron handle at the side of the frame and tips the cauldron forward until a bright tongue of molten copper and tin laps over the brim. Caroline squints in the brilliant heat. Finn tilts his head and looks sideways. The white hot metal liquefies the air as it runs over the lip and into the cavity of the mold. The steam stings her eyes and the sound fills her with dread, a piercing squeal and a pulsing roar like the heart of a star newly birthed. In his thick gloves and leather apron Finn casts an unearthly silhouette in the cramped space of the workhouse. When the first pouring is finished, he rolls away the steaming cauldron and wheels the second into place and tips it forward over the mold. This time the sounds are different, the angry hiss of argument and the screech of hot metal refusing to cool, and Caroline leans close, drawn by the whisper of something anxious trapped in the mold.

  And then comes a low rumble that causes Finn to stand straight and arch his back and he reaches for Caroline in the half second before they are thrown back by what sounds like a volley of gunshots, the sound splitting the air and the flagstones underfoot shattering and flinging shards with such force that they slice through the roof. In a second’s span the small workhouse fills with black smoke and whirling plumes of red cinders and then a terrible howl rises from below, and it seems as though they are standing on the head of a comet hurtling toward the sun, and Caroline can make no sense of it until she hears Finn shout.

  “The mold is breached! Run! Run!”

  She chokes on the acrid smoke and at her feet a glowing stream of speculum metal spurts from a crack in the mold—bright and jagged as a thunderbolt—carving a narrow canyon through stone and dirt, flowing sluggishly against the force of its own cooling as if it would find its way to the earth’s center. The stones in the floor shatter from the heat and leap at them knife-edged. Coughing from the smoke and weeping from the heat, Caroline stumbles toward the door, but her cheek strikes the wall and she cannot find the way out. Then the door opens and the smoke rushes toward the night, darkness meeting darkness, and Finn shouts again. He grabs her wrist and pulls her out into the cool air. She hears stones splitting, hears them striking the walls and rafters like bullets. A flying shard cuts into the back of her neck and there is blood on Finn’s face and shirt and still they are running from the workhouse as the screeching grows louder. Finn throws her to the ground and falls on top of her just as the molten spew dispenses with the last bit of the crumbling mold in a rush that knocks the door from its hinges and sends forth a final volley of shattered stones.

  Shouts rise from New Park and candles spring to life. Seamus and Sean come running with buckets useless against the flames. Caroline looks up and sees her father leaning out from his open window and in the darkness he seems to float above them in his white nightshirt. Finn pulls her to her feet, and she is dizzy with the heat and noise and the pressure of his hand on her forearm. He is already apologizing and he tells her that they will try again, that next time they will get everything right, and amid the ringing in her ears and the loud crackle and hiss of the flames consuming the workhouse, she thinks she hears her father laughing high above.

  The next morning it is Seamus Reilly who comes to her as she prepares to bring her father his breakfast of tea and toast and apple preserves. A faint bruise has risen on her arm where Finn grabbed her, and her neck aches from the shard that struck her as she ran. When she touches her fingers to the spot she finds a crust of dried blood. She places a small spoon and knife on the tray alongside the saucer so her father can easily find them. She will explain what happened, will show him that it was simply a miscalculation that caused the accident; she will reassure him that they will rebuild the damaged workhouse and pry the jagged spill of hardened speculum metal from the soil and begin again. Caroline steeps the tea in kitchen, practicing what she will say, but now Seamus is standing before her, insisting that she leave the tray and follow him, and he shuffles his feet and works his shoulders as though he were coming loose at the joints. He is a clumsy man with words and he seems unable to make sense of what he has seen and she wonders if the cooled metal has made some suspicious pattern in the dirt that has given him cause to worry. He says he knows it is not right to call on her for this, but there is no one else, and who would be the proper person to send for in such a matter anyway. He holds his hat in his hands as he leads her to the garden. It is an embarrassment, he says, to be so taken with the drink, and he tells Caroline that he has tried to rouse her father but he did not want to come too close, and he thought perhaps the voice of the man’s own daughter would call him back to himself.

  When they round the corner of the house, Seamus points to the rosebushes along the wall, broken and flattened, and he says he cannot bear to look at the disgrace of it and if they do not wake him slowly he might do further harm to the roses and himself if he begins struggling in the thorns. Seamus says something more, but Caroline cannot hear him as she peers into the tangled bushes where her father lies twisted and facedown and half-sunk in the black soil. She puts her fist to her throat and feels the ground roll beneath her feet, for she knows at once that Arthur Ainsworth is not drunk or asleep, that only a fall from the rooftop could have driven him as far into the earth as the rivulets carved by the molten tin and copper.

  Chapter 23

  MACHINATIONS

  With the tapered foot of his blackthorn, Colum McPherson pokes the fire in the hearth and mashes the smoldering papers heaped at the top as he waits for Caroline Ainsworth to arrive. He raps the stick against the hearthstone, knocking the ashes from the gnarled wood, and he commends himself—as he has every day for the past two weeks—for the patience he has shown, for the sufferance that has delivered him to this moment.

  One needs only to wait, and everything will return to how it once was.

  Colum watches the fire do its work as he rolls the stick between his palms; it still bears the faint mark of his father’s hand, where his rough fingers stressed the wood when it was soft, before time gave it the hardness of iron. It is remarkable, he thinks, the way that some things pass away while others endure, but it was easy enough to foretell which was which, if one knew where to look. From the beginning, he had seen how the arrangement with Owen O’Siodha would end. He had told everyone that it was a terrible idea, told them to watch how the passing years would prove him correct. But it is an embarrassment that he had not foreseen the full trouble the girl would bring. From among the desperate, crumbling cottages teeming with children half naked and ill fed, Colum could not have found an infant of meaner beginnings, a puny thing, pale and weak and damaged. The girl’s father must have been a pincher, her mother a drab. And her bedeviled arm was not the only unnatural thing about her. Her eyes seemed ever fixed on some great distance. She spent all of her time companied with books and spyglasses and maps of the night sky, and perhaps this fault was not entirely her own, for it had much to do with the way Arthur Ainsworth brought her up, but she took to this strange life so readily that there was surely something about her that made her fit for causing trouble. Had Arthur Ainsworth sought his opinion, Colum would have advised that the girl be instructed in womanly things, sewing and singing or whatever skills wealthy men sought in a governess, for she had gotten it into her head that she would never take a husband.

  Colum had never found much use for marriage, could not see why anyone should have a need for it, really. Ireland suffered no short supply of children, and as for the rest of it, he saw no reason to burden himself with a wife when the brief satisfactions it brought could be found elsewhere easily enough. But if Caroline Ainsworth had truly wanted to marry, she could have found a man willing to make good use of her,
had she not thought herself so great a prize. There was no denying that the squirreled-up arm was distressing to look at—it frightened Martha, and simple-minded Peg thought the touch of it would blister the skin—but there was truly nothing so unusual about it, not in this world where God spread gifts and curses unevenly. Still, there was something devilish about her, the way that she acted as though she were meant for something better.

  Colum took care to stay out of her way, lest she turn her witchery upon him, and he was certain that she had been the cause of Arthur Ainsworth’s crazed insistence on having a giant telescope made of mirrors, for he saw the strange power she held over him. And to be sure, once the man’s mind began to falter, he seemed entirely unable to resist the woman’s sway. Why else would he have attached a letter to his will, handing the estate to this woman who was not related to him in the slightest? Colum shudders at the very idea: to think that Caroline Ainsworth, who had entered this world lower than Owen O’Siodha himself, should have the right to give commands to him, Colum McPherson, middleman and land agent for three generations of landlords at New Park.

  But he has averted this tragic turn. He has been patient, and the shape of a man’s end will ever redraw the contours of the life before it. Who could say how long Arthur Ainsworth’s mind had been unsound? Since the tragedy of the man’s fall from the roof, Colum has continued to make his rounds, rapping upon doors with the knob of his stick as if nothing had changed, though every tenant asked the same thing. Even the men too old to work looked up when he approached and tugged at his coat and whispered the question as if they feared the power of the word: Féinmharú? Self-murderer?