The Blind Astronomer's Daughter

by John Pipkin

  James squeezes the square of paper in his fist as though he thought to wring some answer from it. It escaped his understanding, how a man could willingly hasten his own departure from the world. Thomas’s letter described how Castlereagh had apparently retired to his study one evening and then opened his own throat with a penknife. James still found it hard to fathom. The previous century had turned without the cataclysms so many expected, and at the start of the new one Castlereagh had argued that direct rule by England would ensure a lasting peace between Catholic and Protestant; within a year, Ireland’s Parliament voted for its own dissolution. James wonders if Castlereagh had come to doubt the decision, or if he had other regrets and sorrows beyond the reach of reason. Where, exactly, had he placed the knife-edge, and how hard had he pressed to drive it home?

  The report of Castlereagh’s death has lodged in James’s thoughts. He carries the letter in his breast pocket, pulls it out now and then as if to confirm that he has not invented the news. One night he woke trembling, having dreamt that he lay upon the cobbled yard of Dublin Castle, next to Castlereagh and Foster and Beresford, and that each man in turn rose and walked off and left James immobile on the stones, trapped by the weight of his own limbs. Castlereagh’s death should not have affected him so. James wonders if he has misremembered him. Had they shared a friendship closer than he recalls, or had the passing of time simply lacquered new importance on the dwindling numbering of acquaintances with whom he still shared the earth?

  He turns from the window, pulls at the edges of his skullcap to cover the dull fringe of scar. The day awaiting him, like so many before it, is his to spend as he chooses. He might unroll the maps in his library and survey the distant, wild lands claimed by sword and pen, or he might walk the half mile to Glendalough—along the very road built by Cornwallis to defeat the Wicklow insurgents—and linger among the mossed stones of the ruined abbey. Or he could just as well stroll among the trees on his estate, wade knee-deep through leaves windswept into towering drifts. He palms the teapot, confirms it is too cold to drink now, and gathers the papers spread over the table, each bearing a single crooked line connecting one to the next. He is drawing his own map of the River Nile, an aggregation of various maps he has culled from the books written by other explorers. But he will not work on it today. He had hoped for a time that he might produce a map of such improvement that adventurers would carry it into the world to guide their steps, but he knows that no man would ever trust a map drawn by one who has never set his foot where he has cast his eye. Perhaps that explained the intractable problems in Ireland. To map a river was one thing, to walk its banks and alter its flow was another thing entirely. It is hopeless to think that any land could be remade to better suit the men living upon it; they should all leave this island and settle on the banks of the Susquehanna or the Mississippi or the Nile—or some far-off region of the world where there was as yet no history—where they might begin again, unburdened and unallied to the past.

  After the rebellion, James’s father had urged him to return to London, but he had no desire to live out his days as an object of pity, a scarred recluse, unable to remain wakeful long enough to fulfill the simple duties of any appointment his father might secure. Rumors of what had precipitated his injury attached to the wound like scabs: that he was a traitor, that the yeomen had known what they were about, that the United Irishmen had turned on him when his resolve weakened, that his cowardice had brought him to ruin. He knew that these suspicions would precede him if he returned to London, and he would have been badgered again and again to lift the skullcap and bow his head like a dog trained to perform in the market at Covent Garden. He would have been asked to recount the grisly pitch-capping in detail so that gentlemen might express their horror even as they delighted in watching their wives swoon. He had never thought he would live out his days alone in Ireland, but he could not return home. In Ireland, at least, it was understood that no one had come through the end of the previous century unscathed.

  For a time he continued to inhabit the same narrow room in Dublin Castle, an obscure secretary serving one administration after another, each convinced that it had a proper solution for the Irish problem. He tried to leave only once. In the year after the fighting, when his flayed scalp had covered itself with tender scurf, he received a thin packet from his father. It held another letter urging his return, and a slim volume of poetry bearing the title Lyrical Ballads. The book had been published anonymously just after the rebellion’s end, but none of the poems alluded to the fighting. The verses spoke of shepherd boys and mad mothers and a sailor possessed by demons with a dead albatross dangling at his neck, and hardly did a line pass without mentioning the moral certitude of trees and hedgerows. One poem, though, stood out from the others. It was dated July 13, 1798, and it caused him to recall how, for most of that same July, he had lain in his bed, bandaged and stupefied with laudanum:

  Five years have past; five summers, with the length

  Of five long winters! And again I hear

  These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs

  With a sweet inland murmur.

  So comforting did the poet’s words render the idea of returning home that James packed a rucksack and summoned a carriage and on his own traveled to Kingstown to buy passage on the next ship bound for Liverpool. He wandered the crowded docks and stood at the foot of the mile-long pier with its far end shrouded in sea spray, and it seemed a man might set out from there and take himself anywhere in the world. And the next thing he knew, he awoke in the mud between a row of barrels and a warehouse, his pockets empty, his coat, boots, hat, rucksack: gone. He had needed to beg his way back to Dublin like an ordinary pauper, barefoot and humiliated, and he resolved thenceforth to remain within the safety of the Castle’s walls.

  When his father died, the inheritance was barely adequate to provide a living in London, but in Ireland there was land to be had cheaply. Many landowners had fled the fighting, never to return, and they were only too willing to rid themselves of their troubled properties. James purchased a small estate in Wicklow and still had income enough to hire servants and create the semblance of a living. Here, alone, he passed the years in reading, and hunting, and walking the grounds and studying the maps of far-off countries that he would never see.

  James takes an atlas from the shelf, sits at his desk, and turns to a map of North America. He slides his finger down the fissured coastline and stops near the middle, at a rectangular territory called Pennsylvania, and there it is, the snaking river, the Susquehanna. It might not be too late to start over, he thinks. He does not want to end his days filled with regret, penknife clutched in his hand and turned upon himself. What regrets could drive a man to do such a thing? He might yet settle at the river’s edge, or seek out the endless possibilities waiting in the nearby city of Philadelphia. He watches the river sparkle and flow over the page, a blue line flickering through green hills, and he knows what is about to happen but is not concerned. It is the one great pleasure of living alone, that he can drift into and out of the sleeping fits with impunity. When he again opens his eyes, the Susquehanna has become a dampened pool against his lips, and the skullcap lies overturned upon the broad spread of Canada. America, he determines, might be too far after all.

  There are closer adventures to be had. He might go to Scotland, to the Hebrides, or perhaps to the Continent. He might sail the Rhine or the Danube. Venturing alone is out of the question, but finding a traveling companion is an obstacle easily surmounted. Advertisements to this effect regularly appear in the Dublin newspapers. Wanted: a useful companion to accompany and assist a gentleman on continental travels. Passage provided. Most often, such notices were placed by old men, weak, frail, requiring a hardy soul to help them return to their ancestral homes so that they might die in proximity to the bones of their forefathers. He decides that he will place an advertisement of his own. He will pay all expenses; surely that would prove enticement enough for a young man to assume
the minimal tasks of standing ready with smelling salts and coffee beans and a pot of strong tea and, if necessary, guarding against his toppling overboard. There are plenty of young men in Ireland desirous of pursuing a future that waits beyond the sea.

  He gathers his ink pot and a sheet of paper, selects a quill, one of the last of the original thousand—in the end, each one had lasted roughly ten days, though the many birds who flew unhindered into the new century had proven his hoarding altogether unnecessary—and as he sharpens the nib with his penknife he cannot help thinking of Castlereagh’s hand and the blade at his throat.

  So, then, how to word the notice? He will need to attract a companion who is trustworthy and reliable. He ought not to make the duty sound onerous, and he must take care not to arouse the interest of the disreputable sort, lest he attract someone who might take advantage of him in his sleep, empty his purse and leave him penniless on the road. He will require a rigorous interview and thereby take full measure of the applicant. He opens a copy of Faulkner’s Dublin Journal to search for a suitable example, and on a page near the end he comes upon a striking advertisement, a sketch of an eyeball peering through a large telescope and beneath this a pyramid of print:

  TELESCOPES OF

  NEWTONIAN AND HERSCHELIAN VARIETY!

  HIGHEST QUALITY OPTICKS AND PROFOUND RESOLUTION.

  CRAFTED BY EXPERIENCED MAKERS OF REFLECTING MIRRORS.

  CONTACT S. O’SIODHA, INISTIOGE, COUNTY KILKENNY, IRELAND

  TO WHOM IT MAY INTEREST

  THE AFOREMENTIONED PROPRIETOR SEEKS A TRAVELLING COMPANION, ABLE-BODIED AND CAPABLE, TO ASSIST IN A JOURNEY TO THE SOUTHERN TIP OF AFRICA. TO EXPLORE THE MYSTERIES OF THE SOUTHERNMOST SKY. EXPENSES TO BE MET.

  The announcement floats above the page, sparkles at its margins. This does not sound like a call from a feeble old man on the precipice of his final journey. Africa. The words resound with such purpose. To explore the mysteries of the southernmost sky. It is difficult not to be jealous of the lucky young man who is no doubt already composing his application to Mr. O’Siodha, a letter boasting of the applicant’s strong back, a knowledge of the ways of men, and perhaps even a hint of adeptness with pistol and blade. James imagines the young man’s hand trembling with excitement as he writes, anxious to appear capable beyond his years, careful not to misspell the words that might reveal him unfit for the task.

  He brims with envy as he considers the unexpired advantages of youth, and this is a worry, for surely this is the very same sort of man who will reply to his own advertisement, a boy ready to flaunt his vigor and laugh at the great distance that yet separates him from life’s unpleasantness. How could he tolerate spending every day of his journey in the presence of a youthfulness no longer his own? James dips his quill and holds the nib above the blank paper. He must word his advertisement carefully. He will specify that he seeks a companion of middling age, though still in possession of strength and vitality, someone able-bodied but of tempered virility, lest his companion believe himself licensed to condescend. James rereads the advertisement in the newspaper and selects several phrases to repeat in his own.

  He thinks it through further and lowers his pen. He ought not to imply that he himself is lacking the qualities he seeks in a companion, not when he is still able-bodied and capable. His limbs are as sound and strong as they have ever been; his only weakness is the nameless sleeping sickness that still haunts his waking hours, but these episodes seem to come on a little less frequently now. Why, he is almost fit to answer the telescope maker’s advertisement himself. The thought gives him pause. Why should some undeserving boy steal off with the dream that is deservedly his own? James has studied maps of Africa and already knows every river and mountain and the contours of the coast, and surely no youthful exuberance is adequate to countermand the knowledge that comes from deliberate living. To travel to Africa—to delve into the jungle and fall asleep in warm breezes—this is a dream belonging to him, a desire postponed and ignored until it acquired the constancy of a slow-burning ulcer. In his dreams, the lush continent has been waiting for him. It seems unfair that he should stand aside and allow some boy to advantage himself of the longing that he has nurtured through the world for so many years.

  The ink drips from the nib and James dips the quill again and wonders if this is one that Thomas brought him, gathered from the carrion crows fighting at the gates of Dublin Castle. He puts down the quill and reaches for another piece of paper. Perhaps, he thinks, there is no need to place his own advertisement after all.

  Chapter 41

  ITALY, JUNE 1823

  Already she will arrive too late.

  And the ashes of the atlas are to blame.

  Seven months she spent in preparation, working through the new calculations again and again, but only in the past week did she discover her error, and now there is nothing to be done about it. No amount of regret or apology will change the fact that after a lifetime of waiting, she will have waited too long.

  Siobhan clings to the bench in the narrow boat rowed by pair of young Italian men with sunburned faces. She has no reason to be here now, and traveling without purpose is nothing more than wandering. At fifty-nine she knows she is too old for this sort of incautious adventure; her dark hair is shot through with silvered streaks and her eyes have lost some portion of their former acuity, and already in the mornings she feels the quiet ache in her bones of a common and dull foreboding. Sea spray has fuddled the joints of her brace, turned the copper wires green, loaded the rifts with brine. Moving her fingers requires painful effort and raises a squeal from the hinges arthritic with rust. Tired, dyspeptic, grimed with salt, she misses Eithne and Aislinn and Aibhlinn, wonders where Colleen and Maire are at this very moment, and imagines Maeve scraping together a morning meal of fried potatoes and eggs and thick slices of ham tough and salted. She realizes that she should never have left them. Seated next to Siobhan, one hand on his stomach and the other at his mouth, is Mr. James Samuels, the quiet man from Wicklow who answered her advertisement in Faulkner’s Dublin Journal with an introduction five pages in length, explaining the many advantages to be enjoyed when traveling in his company.

  He is much older, and less competent, than his letter led her to believe.

  From the Port of Civitavecchia the oarsmen guide the narrow boat down the Tiber River to Rome. Siobhan’s feet are wet and cold from the water that laps into the boat with each pull of the oars, and she wonders how much more water the shallow boat can take on. Mr. Samuels claims that once they are in Rome they will have no trouble finding a ship to carry them around the African coast to the Cape. She does not see the logic in this, but she has no better plan. This is the farthest that she has ever traveled from her home. Each day the distance begets more distance, and some days an emptiness fills her, as though she were stumbling down a long flight of stairs, clutching hopeless at the air. She does not ask Mr. Samuels if he feels the same. He has said little since their departure. In his letter he described himself as an experienced cartographer. He told her he had drawn the contours and rivers and mountain ranges of far-flung continents, that he had traced the routes of trade and exploration and the meanderings of winds and currents. But she knows well enough that a man need not travel at all to pretend to know the way. Mr. Samuels spent most of the time on the Snow Lovely Nelly stooped over a bucket at the stern, and even now, here on the Tiber, his face blanches with the rocking of the narrow boat and he mutters into his palm mournful oaths against time and distance. Siobhan studies the bright flashes of sunlight on the water and the angle of the noontime shadows on the riverbank. Their journey is already taking much longer than expected, the route more circuitous than intended, but the days lost in traveling no longer matter.

  Siobhan discovered her error in the middle of night, standing on the deck as the ship pitched slow on gentle swells. Something in the blink of stars at the ocean’s edge caused her to question the exactness of her sums. In the tiny cabin she shared with the twelve other pa
ssengers, she opened her notebook and arranged on her berth the few charred pages that remained from the atlas. A lamp hanging from a nail spun yellowed shadows over the walls in eccentric orbits and made the pages appear to swirl before her. In the notebook she had worked out the subtle progression of Uranus and these measurements ran to long decimals that rolled over the pages like a teeming nest of centipedes. She had accounted for the infinitesimal accelerations of massive Jupiter gliding silently toward Saturn, and the noble ringed planet hesitating ever so slightly under the strain, and then picking up speed as it approached Uranus, and all of them pushing and pulling and prodding each other over vast distances. Her calculations showed that the combined gravity of Jupiter and Saturn was not enough to explain the irregularities in the orbit of Mr. Herschel’s planet. There had to be another body acting upon it, and her sums pointed to where the distant cousin of these outer planets should be, though no one had found anything there. This in itself was surely a thing never done before—discovering a new world that would probably never be seen, since no telescope could penetrate the accumulated darkness of so great a distance. But Mrs. Herschel’s letter had shown her another way. When Siobhan matched her predictions of the undiscovered planet’s orbit with the location of the hole in the heavens that Mrs. Herschel had described, she confirmed that the distant world would soon pass through it, and she planned to be waiting to catch it in the open.