The Blind Astronomer's Daughter

by John Pipkin

  James finishes the second to last letter to be carried to the generals in the field—Lake, Dundas, Duff, Nugent, and Abercrombie—and each says much the same:

  The Privy Council requests, in all possible haste, an accounting of the progress of pacification and of the discovered intent of those traitors apprehended …

  There has been little reliable news on the progress of the fighting for some time. So far as anyone in the Castle knows, all of Wexford has already fallen to the insurgents, and nothing but fresh troops from England will drive them out. It seems likely that the rebellion will soon reach Dublin, and once the city is surrounded there is no doubt that the Irish Army will turn against itself.

  Soft footsteps pad in the corridor, and when James looks up, the figure drifting toward him gives him a start—its mien so frail and specter thin it might be mistaken for one of the slain men lying in the Castle Yard. James’s vision blurs to a brightly fringed tunnel before he recognizes that it is Thomas Lamar. Under a bone-thin arm he carries a sheaf of papers, and the weight pulls him off-center. The poor man has been racked with a mucoid sickness since his arrival, and his clothes hang half-empty, waiting to be filled by a healthier twin. When he reaches the door to James’s room he leans against the frame and wheezes, then looks at James as if seeking rescue.

  “Have you heard what’s become of O’Connor?” Thomas asks, his voice a dry scratch, like the turning of brittle pages.

  James shakes his head. “Which O’Connor?”

  “The baker in Great Dame Street. Flogged to pieces in the gutter.” Thomas rubs his arms and shivers. One of the papers flutters to the ground, and when he stoops to retrieve it he totters off balance. “What’s left of him they’ve hung from the sign in front of his own shop.”

  “Is anyone to answer for it?”

  Thomas shrugs. “It’s a mob of loyalists that did it. They say he poisoned an officer.”

  “Did he?”

  Thomas shrugs again. “The man made excellent pigeon pie.” He shudders, and James notices the sheen of sweat glistening on his forehead.

  “You ought to seek a healthier clime,” James tells him, not for the first time.

  “My friend, I cannot run from the end.”

  Once a week, at least, Thomas Lamar insists that he will not outlast another sweep of the clock, and yet here he is, as much alive as any man.

  “You cannot know it for certain.”

  Thomas smiles, teeth rusted and staggered. “Ah, but I do, a parade of endings: the century’s, Ireland’s, my own. There is no outrunning any of it.”

  James suspects that most of Dublin’s inhabitants hold opinions of a similar sort. Lord Camden himself, days before the attack on the mail coaches, instructed James to make arrangements for his wife and daughter to sail for London, and the viceroy urged discretion, so that no one might accuse him of doubting the Castle’s defenses. The rest of the Privy Council had already sent their families back to England. Now the ports at Belfast and Kingstown and Waterford are overrun with desperate emigrants, mostly landlords and their families who do not trust the Irish Army to protect them from all-out rebellion.

  Thomas shifts the parcel of papers from one arm to the other. “I’ve heard what they call me.” He holds up a pale hand before James can insist that he has never said it himself. “The Specter of the Castle. I am flattered to be thought so far ahead of my time.”

  Thomas hands James a bundle of letters from the stack beneath his arm.

  James checks the clock. “The post is early?” Half past noon and still he has not finished the final letter.

  “These arrived by special courier,” Thomas says.

  James fingers the wax seals from William Pitt and Thomas Pelham, and he weighs the two letters in his palm. “I can feel the lightness of refusal,” he says, then drops his voice. “This time the request was for ten thousand.”

  “Did the Privy Council think Whitehall would agree to so many?”

  James turns the letter over. “They say the rebels have an army of forty thousand.”

  “Who says this?” Thomas wipes his brow with the back of his hand. “And where is this supposed army?”

  “New Ross. They have taken Wicklow Town, apparently.”

  “And you have this news from the intelligencers, no doubt? I do not relish having to deal with those men. They say whatever they must to get paid.”

  “Still, if even half that number proves true …”

  “Oh, yes, and our spies, ever forthright, insist that a thousand men stand ready to overtake Dublin and a thousand more wait to rise within the city itself. For months they have said this, and yet where are these insurgents?”

  “There must be some truth to it.”

  “Well, to that end”—Thomas pulls a clutch of feathers from his pocket—“every man must ready himself for the future that awaits. I found these scattered at the gates, from the birds scrabbling over the heads. I thought you could use them.”

  James imagines what the old woman in the Liberties would likely say about quills gathered in this way. Still, he is very close to the number he needs in order to prepare for the century’s turn. He is about to thank Thomas when a shrill scream rises from the Castle Yard, followed by the firing of a gun and panicked shouts. James goes to the window and sees a trio of soldiers running and pushing one another forward. They have been expecting the attack to come at any moment, and now it seems upon them at last.

  “And so we come to the beginning,” Thomas says and leans against the wall. “Or the ending.”

  James stands and offers his chair. “Wait here.”

  By the time he reaches the upper yard, soldiers are running from all corners, and a guard near the gate fires his gun into the air to bring still more. Near the bodies laid out in the yard, a woman lies senseless on the cobbles, and a man cradles her head in one hand and fans her with the other. John Beresford, a small wig perched on his crown like a splayed hymnal, stoops over one of the mangled bodies and pokes the arm with his walking stick. In his tan coat, he gives James the impression of a newly sprouted toadstool. Beresford straightens when he sees James approach.

  “Now here is a man likely to understand such mysteries.”

  The soldiers hold muskets at the ready, as if they would fire upon the dead. Outlined by damp stains on the stones, the bodies bear too many gashes to number, and they have already begun to swell in the heat. James holds a handkerchief to his nose but he cannot mask the stench. There is something familiar in it, a visceral warning against gammon long past edible. One of the dead men seems to look straight at James with an eye that is only a black hole.

  “It’s done now,” a soldier says, ruddy and paunchy and fairly bursting from a uniform several inches too small. A scorched hole in the lapel suggests the previous owner’s fate.

  Lord Camden arrives with John Foster a half step behind him.

  “Are the gates secure? Why are no guards posted on the walls?”

  The soldiers exchange embarrassed glances and step back from the bodies on the cobbles.

  “How many do we face?” Lord Camden asks, looking from soldier to soldier.

  “It’s only these three here,” one of the soldiers says.

  The viceroy wears no wig, and his own hair, a wispy cincture of white, stands in all directions as if he has been roused from sleep. Foster, as always, wears the long wig that flaps when he turns his head, like the ears of a hound, dusting his shoulders with powder.

  “Are we defending ourselves from dead men now?” Lord Camden asks.

  Beresford turns to the viceroy, leans on his walking stick. It seems to James that the old man is enjoying the spectacle.

  “They are your trophies, Lord Camden. It is for you to say what must be done.”

  “Will no one explain the disturbance?” The viceroy runs his hand over his scalp.

  The officer in charge, sweating in the heat, adjusts the gilt crescent gorget hanging from the top buttons of his lapels and grunts. “Would y
ou have us hang them from the gate? That should put an end to it.”

  Lord Camden glances at Foster and back to Beresford, and before he can say anything the soldier in the too-small jacket points and shouts.

  “Moiley! There he goes again!”

  On the ground, in the stagnant heat, the dead body in the middle twitches, then exhales with a rush of air that seems to issue from the wounds themselves. James feels his stomach lurch. Starbursts dance before his eyes, but he cannot let himself swoon now, not in the presence of the viceroy and half the Privy Council.

  Lord Camden puts his hand to his mouth.

  “And that is why we sent for you.” Beresford smiles.

  The body sighs again, and James recalls something he once heard about the import of a man’s last breath, but he cannot recall whether it is a thing to be sought or avoided. He takes a step back, pinches his nose beneath the handkerchief.

  “It is the sun’s doing,” John Foster says. “Agitated gasses leaving the body. A spontaneous dephlogistication of the air, I should think.”

  The body trembles again, convulses as if shaken by an unseen hand, and then the dead man sits up and groans.

  James stumbles backward. The soldiers reach for their swords and Beresford swings his walking stick. The dead man moans weakly, Mother of God, and only then is it evident that he is indeed back among the living.

  “The demon blasphemes!”

  A soldier raises his sword but the officer calls him off, and turns to Lord Camden. “Shall we finish him at the scaffold?”

  The viceroy shakes his head in disbelief. “Get him to the surgeon.”

  “And then hang him?” the officer asks.

  “Take his confession first,” Lord Camden says, running his hand over the froth of hair ringing his pate. Then he glances at Foster and Beresford. “And then return him to his family with a severe warning never to take up arms again.”

  Beresford stiffens. The officer’s eyes widen in surprise.

  Foster leans close to the viceroy and speaks loudly enough for everyone to hear. “Do you think it wise? This devil is, after all, a rebel and a traitor, apprehended in the act of insurrection. It will not set a good example for others who would do the same.”

  “If God sees fit to pardon a man, Mr. Foster, we would be wise not to countermand the judgment.”

  The officer calls to his men and they lift the groaning man by his feet and arms and carry him slack across the yard.

  “Most amazing,” Beresford says, poking the other two bodies with his walking stick. “The dead returning to life. I had not thought the Irish capable of it.”

  “I suspect he was not thoroughly deceased,” Lord Camden says.

  Beresford jabs a thumb skyward. “Certain men of science, call them what you will, hold that a fiery arrow of lightning contains sufficient vitality to reanimate the dead. But I see no dark clouds to supply the necessary bolt.”

  “Perhaps,” Lord Camden repeats, “our risen man retained some spark of life.”

  “I have seen the sun reinvigorate dead flies in a glass jar,” Beresford continues. “If we receive such trophies in future, we should take care to keep them hidden in shadow.”

  The viceroy tugs at his coat sleeves, brushes away a dusting of powder that has fallen from Foster’s wig. “Something more than sunlight is needed to bring the dead to life, else our graveyards would empty themselves each dawn.”

  “An excellent point,” Beresford concedes. “This man might be a moiley after all. I would have a word with him myself.” He pokes the body nearest him once more and frowns in disappointment.

  “Dispose of these remains suitably,” Lord Camden tells the officer.

  “We’ll toss them into the Liffey.”

  “No.” A shadow passes over the viceroy’s face. “Bury them in Bully’s Acre, at Kilmainham. I’ll not be ghosted by the memory.” He mutters something more to Foster then turns and heads back to his apartment alone.

  James can hardly believe what he has seen. It is impossible to think that the man has actually returned from death, but surviving the ghastly wounds to his arms and chest seems hardly more likely. He has watched the events as if in a trance and now he realizes that the mail coach is surely due to arrive at any moment and the letters will not be ready.

  “Mr. Samuels, a remarkable thing, is it not.”

  Beresford and Foster turn toward him and James wishes he had not lingered so long.

  “Sir?”

  “Mr. Foster and I were discussing how little we truly know of our enemy.”

  Foster hugs his elbows, and little plumes of powder drift from his wig. “Our soldiers, Mr. Samuels, quarter with Protestant landowners in all corners, but of the Catholics we know nothing. We need improved understanding.”

  James thinks of the letter remaining to be copied. If the insurgents so easily rise from their wounds, the Castle will need far more than ten thousand men.

  “Do you think it possible, Mr. Samuels, that the papists are in possession of powers beyond our knowledge?” Beresford sighs, as if weary of what he must say next.

  They mean to test my loyalty, James thinks. Had he smiled when the man arose? Had his reaction betrayed his sympathy?

  “The papists truly amaze,” Beresford says, and pauses, and James cannot tell if he is expected to offer his own opinion on the matter. “I have always held that the Relief Acts were regrettable. To hand Parliament to the very people who would tear this country asunder. One wonders at the witchery they might yet unleash upon us.”

  “And they are in our very midst,” Foster says. “Just beyond the walls, in the Liberties, superstitions abound.”

  Beresford reaches into his coat and removes a folded square of paper. “We have stormed the Liberties once already, and with that single decisive action we have apprehended Edward Fitzgerald himself, though it’s doubtful he’ll survive his injuries. But now the rebellion rages on, even without its leader, and yet we do noth-ing more.”

  “We ought set the whole neighborhood aflame,” Foster says. “It is a nest of vermin.”

  James recognizes the folded paper. His heart beats faster and he can hardly keep his balance.

  “Lord Camden will not take further action”—Foster lifts his chin, like a dog sniffing the air—“not until he has absolute proof that the rest of Fitzgerald’s conspirators are still hiding there. Such a craving for certitude our viceroy has.”

  “Oh, he is a cautious man, he is,” Beresford says, thumbing the wattled skin beneath his chin. “So we must provide him the certainty he desires. But it’s a brave man who would set foot in the Liberties to gather facts for the viceroy. We need someone familiar with that bleak place.”

  Beresford unfolds the square of paper and shows it to James.

  “It quite surprises us to learn that you, Mr. Samuels, are not at all foreign to that quarter.”

  James feels the ground moving beneath his feet and the blood rushing in his ears like a funneling of sand. They are going to accuse him of treason, he is sure of it, and it will be enough to send him to the gallows.

  “A man might be hard pressed to explain his interest in the Liberties,” Beresford says, “unless, of course, that man is procuring information on our behalf.”

  Foster leans close and James smells the chalky powder of his wig. “We would have no cause to think a man spying for the enemy, if we knew him to be spying for the Castle.”

  Beresford waves the piece of paper. “Such a list as this, we might easily forget.”

  James claws at his palms. The starbursts close in from the edge of his vision, but he fights them back, feels the blood return to his face and the ground come back to level. To become a spy for the Castle? They were asking him to choose the means of his execution. He should have left Ireland long before this. When he secured passage for Lord Camden’s family he might easily have put his own name on the list, arrived at the docks dressed as a woman as other men were doing even now. He looks from Beresford to Foster a
nd glances at the ground to reassure himself that he is indeed still upright, and then he sees that the bodies of the two dead men have already been carried off, though the stains remain, greasy shadows on the gray stones.

  Chapter 34

  THE BLIND ASTRONOMER’S ATLAS

  She waits for him, and there is nothing more to do.

  At night, in dreams so seeming-real they speed her pulse, she laughs at how quickly this spinning world remakes itself, and the laughter is a sweetness skipping over her tongue, and the waiting seems not so great a strain as the waking hours make it. In her dreams she watches Finn disappear with the men in green kerchiefs and she does not worry, for this dreaming brings him back to her as she makes ready with a sturdy coat of tightly woven wool, deep pockets crammed with useful things: inkpot and quill, a pair of leather gloves, a ball of stockings, a penknife, Martha’s large wooden spoon and Peg’s knitting pins, folded papers and stiff-backed cards looped with string, and she is wearing an old pair of tackety boots—cracked at the eyelets and half-stuffed with leaves—once belonging to Seamus Reilly’s son, the overgrown boy who never uttered a word. And in these dreams she gives Finn the blue pasteboard book and they decide they will not go to London after all, because the world is wide and lies all before them, and Finn says again that he will follow wherever she turns her step, no matter the harshness of the clime, no matter the strangeness of the soil or the language gargled at their ears, and she does not need to know more than that; the uncertainty of what will come next thrills her. No distance on the earth is so great as to warrant fretting, not when compared to the mindless stretch from star to star. To travel a thousand miles over continent and ocean is but the traversing of a dust mote in the compass of the universe. But when Caroline wakes from these rambling dreams, the waiting is altogether different, and the memory of Finn’s leaving is fraught with concern.