by Amy Brill
His face hardened.
“Thy brother has proven that his comings and goings are based on aught but his own whim. If thee wishes to remain, I suggest thee begin to think on the prospect of doing so as half a household.”
“As a wife.” She folded her arms together over her chest, as if she could prevent herself from flying into pieces that way.
“Yes.”
“And imagining that there existed a man I wished to marry—and one who wished to marry me, which I can say with some certainty there is not—if my husband went to sea for years upon end as do half the ‘halves of households’ on this Island, how would it be any different?” She knew she’d lost the battle to keep her feelings hidden, and a desperate confusion crept in, muddling her thoughts. How had she gone from discussing a celestial object with cometary properties to what felt like begging for her life?
“Hannah,” her father said, his voice stern. “I’ve no interest in a theoretical debate about the differences between a whaling wife and an unmarried daughter. In fact, there are entirely practical options before thee which I see no good reason to deny.”
“What options are these?” She lifted her head, wondering if she’d missed something.
“Well”—Nathaniel glanced around, as if there were someone else there to overhear—“Dr. Hall, for one, has spoken to me of his great respect and affection for thee.”
“Dr. Hall?” Hannah nearly shrieked, horrified.
“It is a reasonable idea.”
She lowered her voice, but her body was quivering, like an animal in danger.
“Reasonable? To join myself with a man for whom I have no feeling but scholarly respect, so that I may continue a life I’ve happily built for myself, and in the main by myself?”
His answer didn’t matter: the truth was as clear as a harvest moon. Whatever life he desired for her was the life she was bound to. The idea that she’d determine her own future—find her comet, establish her place—had been a fantasy. It was her own fault, she realized. How foolish she had been to think she’d be permitted to triangulate merrily among the Atheneum and the Meeting House and her tiny garret observatory for as long as she wished. That the limitations and expectations that bound other women’s lives would bypass her own.
“Nothing is settled,” he said. “I await my Certificate of Removal from Meeting. It could be months, even a year. Other options may present themselves. Dr. Hall is but one, though in his defense I will say that he is as like-minded an individual as thee could desire, in addition to being both well established and as keen a supporter of thy work as myself. He’s told me on several occasions that he expects thee to surpass him, and that he welcomes that occurrence. There aren’t many men who’ll share that sentiment.”
Her father looked at her directly, and the sight of his deep-blue eyes, brows knitted with concern, overwhelmed her anger. Against her will, tears sprang up again. This time they spilled.
“Have faith, Hannah. Not one of us can intuit the future. The right path—or person—will appear, I’m certain. In the meantime . . . well, I’ll let thee keep on with thy work.”
He rose and slipped from the room, leaving Hannah sitting beside the desk at which they’d worked in tandem for more than half her life. She had never considered leaving Nantucket. Her sand and shallows, salt and sawgrass, were as much a part of her as the tribal tattoos that marked the whalers from South Pacific islands far distant. Whenever she was off-Island, Hannah felt diminished, invisible as stars veiled by the bright clamor of the city. To leave forever would mean leaving Edward. It would mean leaving the Atheneum and all its treasures, leaving their familiar house and all its memories. It would be the end of everything she’d ever known. Worst of all, it would mean the end of her observations. It was unthinkable.
. 7 . The known planets
When her father left the garret, Hannah stayed in her chair like a prisoner, trying to clear the clouds from her mind and concoct a sensible plan. The only thing that looked like salvation was Edward. She’d be allowed to stay if he were home to act as chaperone and guardian—though he’d be first to point out that their roles ought to be reversed. Together, they could manage to oversee the farm and the chronometers, and even a contract with the Coast Survey, should one materialize.
The downstairs clock chimed her back into the present, and the fantasy of such a contract, along with the new instruments it would inevitably supply, vanished like a cloud of celestial dust. Sticky with unease, Hannah went to the garret door, opened it, and listened. The house hummed with silence. Her father had either gone to sleep or gone out.
She rummaged around the desk for the quill and inkpot, then scribbled a hasty note on the back of a yellowed bill of sale: Mr. Martin: Come up to the walk. When she’d posted it on the door downstairs, she climbed back up three steps at a time, as if she were being chased, and tried to pick up observing where she’d left off. But the cloud cover had thickened into fog. The nebula— if that’s indeed what it was—had disappeared.
Hannah stayed next to the telescope for more than an hour, checking periodically like a mother with a feverish child, but the stars and everything else in the firmament ticked by invisibly. There was barely any wind, nothing to suggest an imminent change in the weather. A film of despair began to settle in her, lightly, like an illness just taking hold, as she contemplated her father’s decision. There was nothing she could do to alter it, short of attaching herself permanently to a male—any male—who would contract to marry her.
The idea that she had always been powerless over her own future, but not realized it, was excruciating. She’d been propelled toward mastery—over her emotions, over her equations, of the biggest and most minute parts of the Universe—for her entire life. Dr. Hall had demanded rigor, his teaching method requiring total expertise on one level before advancement to the next. Fractions came before geometry; simple maths before logarithms and algebraic equations. Until tonight, she thought she’d understood the rules that governed her life as well: work hard, sweep the skies, seek a contribution. Be rewarded. How could she have made so great a miscalculation?
Grinding her teeth, Hannah peered through the telescope again, desperate for something else to focus on. This time she didn’t hear the door to the walk open or close. When she heard Isaac’s deep voice at close range, she gasped, clapping her hand to her chest while trying to catch her breath.
“I’m sorry to be frightening you.” “It’s fine,” she muttered, embarrassed by her display. She smoothed her skirts and squinted at the telescope. “What did you say?”
“I have inquire what you look for? You seem to await.”
“I look for changes. New things in the night sky.” She steadied herself and glanced in his direction. He wore loose pants and a shirt under a woolen jumper and cap, and the same scarf wound about his neck. Hannah shook her head.
“You’re underdressed,” she said. “Take the coat from the peg just inside the door.”
He obeyed without comment, moving across the walk at his usual pace. A boatsteerer might move faster, she thought. The speed of the hunt, the small boats rocketing over the grey sea, the whiz of the reeling line: without a swift hand he should have failed or been maimed long ago, not advanced to his current place. Yet everything took him three times as long as it ought.
He returned, coat buttoned up to the chin. “Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why do you look for this?”
“For knowledge,” Hannah answered. Was it not obvious? When he said nothing, she added, “The pursuit of knowledge is the highest calling.”
“Knowledge?” he repeated, as dubious as if she’d said there were little men winging about on the moon. His doubt—on top of her father’s, on top of everyone’s—was infuriating.
“Yes. What about it, then?” she snapped. As he stood there like a giant puppet, she wondered if the entire enterprise was a waste of time. Maybe there was merit to the claims that his race was inherently lazy
, incapable of industry or intellectual achievement. She hadn’t ever thought it so, but then, she’d never really known any of them, had she?
He shrugged.
“It does not change . . .” He paused, fishing for the next word. “. . . certain things.”
“I don’t understand what you mean.” She glared at the telescope, hoping he couldn’t read her thoughts.
“How men are.”
She tried to parse his meaning from the thin sentence.
“Do you mean character?”
“Character.” The word rolled from his mouth with a smart flourish at the end. “So much knowledge, yet men are . . . as animals.”
Hannah sat up, affronted.
“Men are certainly not animals, Mr. Martin. We have dominion over the beasts. We have intellect. Logic and reason. Why would you believe such a thing?”
His face tightened, Hannah thought, a gesture so minute it barely registered.
“I have seen such behavior upon a ship—and elsewhere—that there is no other way of describing,” he said. “In my experiencing, it is difficult to believe that knowledge alone can change this.”
“Do you mean violence?” she asked, wincing at the thought of men wounding each other.
“Some men are only understanding the language of force,” he said, then fell silent, leaving Hannah to wonder what he might have had to endure—or inflict—to arrive at his current position. It occurred to her that his advancement was no accident; for any man who wished to assist Isaac Martin, there were likely a dozen who wished him ill, based on nothing but the color of his skin.
She sighed.
“That may be true, but it is my belief that knowledge does bring us closer to understanding the plan of the Creator, toward a higher plane, which is to say, the workings of the entire Universe.”
There was a long silence, during which she checked the night sky again and wondered if he’d understood her. A break appeared in the cloud cover, and she watched it for a moment. The nebula came into view, but was obscured a moment later. Disappointed, Hannah sat up, glancing at her student.
“You are seeing all of this?” His cheek twitched. He’s teasing me, Hannah thought, allowing a small smile to crack the plane of her face. It relieved the tension, and when he smiled back, a full, warm grin, hers widened, too. He wasn’t foolish. She felt something pass between them, like a current, and, unnerved, she looked away, breaking the connection by turning back to the telescope.
Gusting winds had cleared a wider swath of sky, exposing the area she hoped to study. She could just show him what she was looking for, instead of trying to convince him it was important.
“Sit here.” She waved him onto her stool. “Quickly! I want you to see something.”
He slid into place without making a sound.
“Can you sight the very bright star nearly in the center of the field?”
While he looked, Hannah imagined the stars within the dense patch of sky under examination.
“Look carefully. Your eyes are an instrument, too. Observe the place just to the left of where the lines intersect in the middle of the lens, and then raise your sight just a few degrees north.”
“I see it,” he said a few moments later, his voice high, excited.
“That is Antares,” Hannah said. “Antares is what we know as a fixed star. We think it is like our sun, which does not change its position. We have gone over the other fixed stars, and the planets.”
Isaac nodded but kept his eye at the lens.
“Now get up for a moment.” He leapt to his feet, hovering close while she leaned in and made a minute adjustment. “Now look again, and describe what you see.”
They swapped places again, and this time he looked through the eyepiece for a full minute before turning his face to her.
“It is cloudy,” he said, sounding disappointed. “I cannot see anything.”
“Ah,” she said. “But it’s a perfectly clear part of the sky, and the lens is in focus. Look again.”
He looked, but shook his head.
“I see only a cloud,” he said. “A cloud full of light.”
“It’s called a nebula.” She tilted her chin toward the distant smudge in the inky sky. “They do look like clouds. But they aren’t clouds. They’re a mix of stars and nebulosity. Now, what is nebulosity?”
She paced the walk, continuing as if he’d been the one to ask. Her voice carried with no effort; the wind had died and the air was still and cold as marble.
“What is it made of? Is it reflected light? Is it dust, or something else? What else is there besides stars, planets, asteroids? What are the bands of light and dark therein? Why do some stars move differently than others? All the planets and a number of stars change their position. Why don’t the others? Why are they even there?”
She stopped behind him. Both their faces tilted toward the sky.
“We see so little of what there may be,” Hannah whispered, gripped by reverence. The urgency with which she wanted him to feel it, too— to yearn for revelation in every sweep of the night sky—was startling, and she cleared her throat before going on. “Do you understand? It’s immense beyond our imagining. The light from the very closest star takes nine years to reach us. Nine years! And yet, every day we see more and more. Some of us, anyway. With the right instruments.”
She could feel Isaac looking at her and see his profile in her peripheral vision, not twelve inches away. Her cheeks tingled, and then her neck.
“But what are you hoping to see?”
Hannah tipped her chin in his direction, though she didn’t look at him directly. Instead, she stared at the telescope, the quiet gleam of the brass in the very dark. His question had reminded her of the conversation with her father, and a current of indignation mixed with rage sprang up. She didn’t want to reveal her state of mind to Isaac, but her next question shot out like a challenge.
“What do you hope for, Mr. Martin?”
“To advance my place,” he answered, careful with each word. “As do I.”
Uttering the words emptied her of all desire to stand up, and she dropped down onto the floor beside him and tucked her knees up under her arms, sighing with relief to have the ground under her, familiar and solid. He half leapt off the stool, gesturing for her to take it, but Hannah waved him back without looking.
“Please. Sit. I prefer it here.” Scooting over a few inches, she leaned against the wooden rail. In one motion, Isaac swung the stool aside and seated himself opposite her, his back to the south rail, and crossed his legs. Then he tipped his head back and stared at the sky.
“How are you arriving upon this?” he asked.
Uppondis. Hannah understood his meaning, though his construction made her imagine the walk as a floating island in a vast sea upon which she’d been marooned. She smiled in the dark.
“My father taught me,” she said, resting her own head on the wooden post behind her. It was familiar as a cradle. “When I was a child I’d count seconds for him during transits. And we used to go to Cambridge quite often. Family friends—a father and son—run the observatory there. They taught me about the instruments, how they work. We’d take them apart and put them back together for hours. The maths came later. In school.”
“It is a gift.”
She pulled her knees closer to her chest. Did he mean the knowledge itself, or its passage from others to herself? Either way, he was correct.
“I suppose so.”
Hannah bit back the urge to say more, surprised she’d said so much already. Revealing her state of mind to a stranger was as dangerous and unthinkable as revealing her body—at least, according to doctrine. She’d seen and walked among people from every part of the Earth her entire life—the sea carried them on- and off-Island as reliably as the sun rose and set—yet this was the very first time she’d ever had a private conversation about herself with one of them. Socializing with the world’s people was grounds for disownment from Meeting these days. How had they
strayed so far off course?
Releasing her knees, she stood up and gripped the railing.
“It’s cleared somewhat,” she said stiffly. “I should explain true altitude.”
Rising, Isaac came and stood on the other side of the telescope. If he was surprised by her shift in tone, he didn’t show it, and she was glad to go back to the lesson.
“It’s similar to refraction,” she said. “Light from a celestial object is bent when it passes through our atmosphere, and the distortion alters our perception of its place. Only when it is directly overhead can we know its true altitude. Do you understand?”
“That the star is not always what it is appearing to be? Yes. I understand.”
“Where it appears to be.”
He nodded, studying the sky. A small smile darted across his cheek like a minnow, then disappeared.
“Where it appears to be,” he parroted.
As they watched, the cloud cover thickened, obscuring nearly every bit of light in the sky, and a sudden wind made her shiver.
“Rain’s coming. We should descend.”
The garret seemed cozy in comparison to the roof. The glow of the little lamp was a welcome beacon, and Hannah moved toward the desk, wondering if she should dismiss him. But the thought of the empty house, the stack of dirty linens and aprons piled beside the washboard, repelled her. It occurred to her that she wanted him to stay.
The desire to remain in the company of anyone— much less Isaac Martin—was so strange that she wondered if she might be ill. Her head buzzed with questions. Had he indeed come from a Godless place? Who had taught him to speak as he did? Where would he go when the lesson was over? And, finally, did he wish to remain, too?
It seemed so, since he hadn’t moved an inch. She scanned the shelf beside the desk, half hoping that her copy of Hutton’s Mathematics would not be there. It was not.
“Do you want to see the Atheneum?” Hannah asked.
