The Movement of Stars: A Novel

by Amy Brill

  Edward nodded.

  “Jerusalem?” Charlotte Coffey repeated, her shock visible to all. “And,” Mary continued, “he’s had his answer. We’ve been accepted.” She beamed at her husband. Edward looked across the table at Hannah.

  “We wished to speak to everyone separately earlier today,” he said. “But with all the hubbub by the tents, our nearest and dearest did vanish like runaway sheep.”

  Hannah would not look at him. Jerusalem was a half a world away. To her right, Dr. Hall said something about the Dead Sea, the science of salt. How it buoyed everything, yet could sustain no life. The Jordan River was mentioned; someone’s father had been to Nazareth, seen the lake upon which Jesus allegedly walked.

  Dr. Hall opined that the story had its basis in the aforementioned sea; Charlotte Coffey said she believed her Savior had walked upon freshwater.

  Hannah felt frozen in place. But her gaze was drawn to Mary, who seemed as happy and hopeful as any new bride. Hannah imagined the journey before her, the places she would see. The moon above Jerusalem lighting the white stones. Stars like runes, ancient and meaningful, spreading overhead.

  “I’m feeling unwell,” Hannah whispered to Dr. Hall, and pushed her chair back from the table. She focused on the pale pink roses on the carpet beneath her feet. Its thick pile caught the legs of the chair, making it difficult to stand.

  She heard Edward say her name. But Hannah continued through the grand foyer with its polished floors, and out the door with its ostentatious brass knocker in the shape of a right whale, and then she was in the street, striding toward the home she was about to lose, under the only night sky she would ever observe. It was difficult to think clearly, now that her only hope for a future of her own choosing had announced his plans to depart for the other side of the world. It was her worst nightmare, what everyone had warned her of. Edward was leaving, and there was nothing Hannah could do to stop it.

  And then Mary was running to catch up, calling her name with her sweet, trilling voice, but Hannah didn’t break her stride until Mary seized her elbow and yanked her to a halt.

  “Please! Let me speak.”

  They faced each other like adversaries about to duel.

  “You must know that Edward wanted to share our plans with you personally, but you disappeared amid the festival,” Mary said, trying to catch her breath. She let go of Hannah’s elbow and brushed it with her hand to smooth the sleeve. Hannah pulled her arm away.

  “Your plans,” she echoed.

  “Yes.”

  Mary straightened her shoulders and stared back. The sight of her calm brow and clear eyes was infuriating.

  “Unbelievable.”

  “Why is that, Hannah?” A hint of something hard crept into Mary’s voice.

  “Where do I even begin? First, there is the matter of this being Edward’s home, and where his family is. This is where he belongs. And second, there is the matter of your own—fitness.” Hannah spat the word out as if it tasted bad.

  “Fitness for what?”

  Mary’s voice carried genuine confusion, but Hannah paused for only a fraction of a second. Then she ceased to think at all.

  “For anything, as far as I can tell. For industry, to begin with. Do you plan to twitter with the birds and the fish all day long? Will you don your finest silks, your French lace, on the crossing? Will you assist with navigation? Collect specimens? Take a lunar? Read a chart? What are you fit for, indeed?”

  Mary recoiled as if Hannah had slapped her.

  “How dare you?” she whispered. “You know nothing of me. And apparently nothing of your own brother. I’ve shown you only interest and kindness, and in return you judge me. Not only me: you judge everyone! From the safety of your rooftop, or the blockade of your desk. Deeming us worthy, or unworthy, in the main, without knowing a thing about our nature. It’s remarkable, really. For all your industry, you see so very little. I pity you,” she finished, a sob catching in her throat. “Once Edward is gone, you’ll have no one at all.”

  Mary turned her back and fled in the direction of her house, leaving Hannah standing in the middle of the dark street, adrift as a ship with no mast. Her rage receded, but she still felt like the victim of a cruel scheme to strip from her everything that mattered.

  The house on India Street would only remind her of all she had lost. She couldn’t go back to dinner. Rooted in place, Hannah thought she could feel the Earth spinning on its axis, while she remained stuck in place, pinned to its surface by the invisible, unseen force of gravity itself.

  . 13 . Gravity

  Three hours later, at nearly ten o’clock, Hannah was walking east, away from Town, her feet finding their rhythm only after a quarter hour of what felt like a slog through a swamp. The ground was softer than it had been earlier in the day. With twilight a gentle fog had returned, and she could only see a few feet in front of her as she passed through Newtown Gate, heading toward the south pasture. She was slowed by the bulk of the Dollond and its stand, which she’d swaddled in a woolen blanket with great care and stuffed into a canvas carry-bag now slung across her back like a large child.

  It will lift, she told herself, the grey mist swirling before her like a series of veils.

  It did not. Ten minutes later, having lost the track twice, she turned back, defeated.

  If she was inclined toward magical thinking, or believed in spirits, it would have been easy to convince herself that every element in the Universe was conspiring against her.

  Instead, she resolved to go home and work on the Adams equations again. Thinking about the dizzying spread of signs and symbols was like an antidote to the poisonous memory of Mary’s face backing away, wounded. But Hannah’s eyes still burned with a gritty mixture of dust and resentment.

  She shifted the heavy satchel from one shoulder to another and squinted at a blurry figure about her height that was walking toward her along the Polpis road. She couldn’t make out his features. As he approached, though, his head bowed but his stride long and easy, familiar with the ground in a way that she recognized, she knew that it was Isaac Martin.

  A dozen bats began flapping wildly in the dark of her belly. Hannah held her ground until he was near enough to hear her speak without shouting.

  “Mr. Martin,” she said, and he raised his head.

  “Miss Price,” he answered, a smile seeping across his cheek and widening into a toothy grin. “Why am I finding you here?”

  “I felt like walking,” she said. “I thought to observe—” She shrugged a shoulder to indicate the bag, and he immediately reached for it. She rubbed her shoulder where the strap had cut in, grateful. “Thank you. Unfortunately, the elements are not cooperating.”

  He shouldered the bag, then turned in the direction she’d been going and offered her his elbow. She hesitated for a second, then linked hers through.

  “So we are walking,” he said.

  Hannah swallowed and willed her feet to move in time with his. The warmth of their coiled limbs was distracting at first. But as they moved along the road, the fog wisping around them and the ground damp underfoot, she forgot to think about the place where they were joined. They were well matched, as if they’d been walking together for years, and they went without speaking for some minutes, their feet falling two by two on the loamy soil.

  “What is the word from Mr. Leary, then?” Hannah said after a quarter hour, surprising herself with her directness.

  Isaac shook his head.

  “He has disappeared again. Like an illusionist, this man.” He kicked a pebble with the toe of his boot. “I had to go to the office of an agent to inquire.”

  Isaac’s face was tight. She’d heard about ship’s agents. They’d sign a dog on as a deckhand if they could get a double fee for the four legs. Yet the owners depended on them more and more to pull crews, since local boys no longer fought for spots on a journey likely to take them away from home for four years in pursuit of the giant creatures they’d fished out of waters closer to
home. When Hannah was a child a typical whaling trip had been two years at most; by the time she was assisting Dr. Hall it had been three. Now it was closer to four.

  “What did the agent say?” Hannah asked Isaac.

  “He say—said—that the Pearl is going nowhere.”

  “What?”

  “He said they are deciding to resheath her copper. That it will be another month.”

  Hannah shook her head and clicked her tongue in sympathy, but a current of relief ran through her at the idea that he wasn’t leaving yet.

  “Why would Mr. Leary not tell you such a thing?”

  He shrugged.

  “I am not important?” he said.

  “But you are second mate!” Hannah answered, indignant, stopping in her tracks and pulling him to a stop, too. Only then did it occur to her that the right or wrong of it wasn’t the part that troubled him. It was work that he needed. She wondered if he had any money at all.

  “What shall you do?” she whispered.

  He shrugged as if he wasn’t concerned, but she wondered if he was only trying to spare her from worrying.

  They started walking again, and the mist thickened, then thinned. Hannah realized they were near Five Corners, in New Guinea. She’d passed through this part of the Island, where colored families—some Nantucketers for three generations at least, others newly arrived clutching their papers—built their houses and ran taverns and boardinghouses and businesses of their own. There was an excellent seamstress in New Guinea; Hannah recalled hearing someone mention that she was unusually reliable for someone of her race.

  “Have you observed anything of late?” Isaac was asking.

  They passed Newtown Cemetery and turned south onto Miacomet Road. Their boots scraped against the grit. Hannah could barely see Isaac, only puffs of steam ahead of him. Several times she heard footfalls approach and fade. But she didn’t see anyone, and no one gave any indication of noticing her. Isaac’s warmth felt like a salve, and she clung to him.

  “I’ve barely had time to observe. It has been difficult. At home.”

  The words snagged, as if she had splinters in her throat. Isaac didn’t respond, and Hannah considered how she might go on without saying too much. Once, a young girl, a neighbor about her age who belonged to the Catholic Church, had explained to Hannah about confession. The idea of sitting in a dark box, whispering her vanities and lusts to a male priest considered God’s living incarnation on Earth, made Hannah cringe. Yet she felt something like what she imagined the pious would feel upon entering that enclosed space, unburdening themselves upon a compassionate—thoughquite human—listener.

  “The Regiment is in port,” Isaac said, his voice soft as the mist. “Your brother is returning?”

  Hannah cleared her throat.

  “Yes. But he is not staying on the Island. Which means—in all likelihood—that I cannot stay, either.”

  They’d walked half the length of Miacomet Pond when Hannah stopped short, taking her arm from Isaac’s, then walked to the edge of the road, which came to an abrupt end, and squinted at the brush.

  “Follow me. There’s a path here that leads south.”

  He obeyed, trailing her into what looked like a thicket. She popped out onto a footpath that snaked around the edge of the water, running south for another quarter mile before turning parallel to the horizon and the edges of the dunes that led down to the shore.

  Hannah took a deep, cleansing breath. A handful of stars emerged overhead, where the fog had thinned. The tiny breakers salted the air. They picked their way along the path to its end, where it widened into a small circle of sand, sheltered from wind by the brush and the dunes.

  As soon as Hannah paused, Isaac settled onto the ground without squirming and surveyed the sky, and she dropped down next to him. She should set up the telescope right away: the bank of clouds to the northwest would be overhead within a half hour. But she hadn’t the will to move. The moment she’d stopped, the full weight of disappointment had landed on her, sapping her energy.

  “You are upset,” Isaac said a minute later. “About your brother.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you do not wish to leave.”

  “I do not,” she whispered. “But I cannot stay, unless I find someone to marry within the next few months. Or make some stupendous discovery that awards me a large sum of currency and a better-paying position.”

  There was no point in dwelling on the absurdity of either scenario. Hannah climbed to her feet and looked over the bluff, feeling like a surveyor at the boundary of the New World. She gazed out over the tumbling surf below, wondering how Isaac saw her. Fierce and strong? Stiff and serious? Did he grasp the gravity of her situation, how powerless she was over the forces that controlled her? There was no way to know. Nor should she care. She was his tutor, she reminded herself. Tutor, then.

  “Did you do your reading on the subject of gravity?” she asked, wrapping her arms around herself and turning toward him.

  “I am not having the time,” he said. “I am sorry. I am working off- Island all week, and then the sheep.”

  “You worked the shearing today?”

  He nodded. No wonder he sounded tired, Hannah thought. He must have risen well before dawn. She wondered where he’d been going when she ran into him. She eyed the bulging leather satchel of his own he’d set down alongside hers.

  “Don’t apologize. In fact . . .” She reached into her bag and drew out a slender volume of Sir Isaac Newton’s Principia, then realized it was too dark to read. “We can have a lesson about it now and you won’t have to do anything but listen.”

  Isaac put an arm over his face, pretending to hide.

  “Newton is speaking of the planetary system,” she began, ignoring the gesture and settling herself more comfortably on the ground beside him, leaving enough space between them for a loaf of bread, or a bucket of ash. She lay the book gently on the ground beside her and closed her eyes, paraphrasing from memory.

  “ ‘The primary planets are revolved about the sun in circles concentric with the sun, and with motions directed towards the same parts, and almost in the same plane,’ ” she began, propping herself on one elbow, then opening her eyes to check if he was asleep.

  “I am listening,” he said, without moving.

  “All right. Well, Newton goes on to posit that mechanical causes cannot account for the regular motions of the planets or the irregular motions of comets. Rather, he says that ‘This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being.’ ”

  Hannah paused and switched elbows, glad for the excuse to move a few inches closer to Isaac. His body radiated warmth. Even as Hannah spoke, she was aware of being drawn toward him, as if by an undertow.

  “And that if the fixed stars are the centers of other like systems, they must all be subject to the same dominion of One; especially since their light, and the light of the sun, and the light from all systems are of the same nature. To prevent them from falling upon each other due to gravity, our Creator placed those systems at immense distances one from another.”

  Isaac sighed and stretched out his arm so that it grazed her elbow.

  Move away, she commanded herself. But her body would not obey. Hannah felt her elbow bend, her shoulders and chest and neck lowering to Earth, her head coming to rest upon Isaac’s arm. Even after she’d stopped moving, the sinking feeling continued, as if she lay upon a featherbed of infinite depth. The clouds had obscured nearly every star. The dark was heavy as a blanket.

  “We are like these systems,” Isaac said a few seconds later. Hannah could feel the vibration of his voice echo through his body and into the arm on which she rested. It felt like low thunder. She wanted to press her hand to his throat, feel his voice hum there.

  “How so?”

  “We are put upon the Earth by the same Creator, if there is such a one.”

  “Yes,” Hannah said, feeli
ng no urge to insist upon His existence.

  “We were placed at immense distances from each other.”

  “We were,” she said.

  “And yet the same forces work upon us.”

  Hannah closed her eyes. Loneliness and longing pooled in her bones, weighing her down. She moved incrementally closer to him, until his fingers curled around her shoulder and she could feel his breath on her forehead. The cold current of warning that cut through in harsh bursts was not strong enough to move her. She willed it away, basking in the warmth, the weight of her bones beside his.

  “They do,” she whispered, feeling like Time itself had stilled for this instant only, granting her a reprieve from worry that she had not earned.

  . 14 . Borrowers and lenders

  When Hannah opened her eyes, the first thing she saw was a grey sky shot through with pale blue and silver. Her dress and hair were heavy with dew. Beside her, Isaac’s chest rose and fell, steady as a tide. His face was peaceful.

  Breathe, she told herself, tamping down the panic rising in her throat by focusing on that action alone. When she’d calmed herself enough to feel that she could move, she sat up, careful not to make a sound. How had she let herself fall asleep here? The idea of facing Isaac was overwhelming. She had no idea what men and women said to each other in such a situation. Though they’d shared nothing but slumber, Hannah felt as exposed as if they’d been intimate. She had to go, and quickly, before it got any later. Her only hope of avoiding a scandal was to get home without being seen.

  Her arms and legs were stiff, but she managed to rise without waking Isaac, or looking too long at his face, lest she be pulled again into wrong thinking.

  In daylight, the truth was easy to see. The tentacles of desire were sticky and invisible, treacherous. They’d reached into her most sensitive parts, exploited her weakness and her need. Hannah crept away from Isaac, nauseous with remorse. Even the pungent scent of her own body seemed different. But all her senses were suspect. She had to be vigilant. His scent, his voice—his face—she must avoid them.