The Movement of Stars: A Novel

by Amy Brill

  my character and strength, as they have to yours. Edward was always the

  one in our family who thrilled to new places, new sights, new people. I

  trained my eyes on the Heavens and felt that was enough for me. I do yet

  spend the best part of each day in great wonder and awe at that expanse

  above us.

  But where it once was my roof, my shelter and solace, now it seems

  to also be a door. To what I do not know. There is a kind of terror that

  sometimes rises in me when I think of what lies ahead, but I hope that in

  those moments, thinking of you will continue to bring me both perseverance

  and Faith.

  I will depart in two weeks’ time and am in hopes to hear from you

  before then. I long to hear your voice, even through the poor medium of

  parchment and ink. Without it I am less steady. But regardless I remain, Your faithful friend,

  Hannah Gardner Price

  $

  Part Four

  RQ

  MAY 1847

  Florence

  * *

  . 29 . Coexistence

  Hannah caught her reflection in the wavy glass of a café, and her hand fluttered to her new hat—a close-fitting silk the color of a fawn, with a narrow, deep-blue ribbon edging. It couldn’t have been more different from her old bonnet, in shape or texture, and she couldn’t hide her face behind it. This, according to Lucia Hapwell, was its best feature. The wife of the writer from Cambridge had taken one look at Hannah’s outfit when she’d stepped off the steamer in London and

  assumed an expression somewhere between shock and pity before whisking her off to the milliner on Regent Street. This particular hat had been a total indulgence, but Mrs. Hapwell had insisted it was subtle and appropriate—not too showy, but “suited for the salon.” Hannah didn’t feel suited for any salon regardless of her headwear, but Mrs. Hapwell promptly marched her from one shop to the next, insisting that she select from what seemed like an absurd number of choices in dress styles, colors, and fabrics, not to mention footwear and stockings. Stockings! Hannah had never before put a thing on her body she hadn’t made herself, and the sensation of the silk against her bare skin felt almost dangerous in its luxury.

  She could only imagine what Lydia Hussey would think. So she put Lydia out of her mind: the part of her life when Meeting elders determined what she could or could not wear was over.

  That didn’t make deciding such things for herself any easier. It took Hannah hours to decide among a set of dress patterns. She would never be comfortable enveloped in a concoction of ribbons and ruffles, but as she paged through store catalogues and the issues of Godey’s Lady’s Book that Mrs. Hapwell had supplied, she slowly compiled a sense of what she might enjoy about contemporary fashions: a neckline that didn’t choke her, for instance, or a choice of colors not restricted to the drabbest corners of the spectrum. The dress fitting itself had nearly mortified her, the seamstress’s calloused hands looping round her waist, her thighs, but the first of the finished products—a deep-green day dress that reminded her of moss, in a soft, draping silk—felt wonderful and, even Hannah had to admit, flattered her complexion.

  That had been the first of a series of lessons in city life, from commandeering a driver to making conversation at what felt to Hannah like harrowing speed. Mrs. Hapwell had insisted that Hannah accompany her to a half dozen salons and suppers, theater outings and tea parties, before deeming her ready to deliver her own letters of introduction.

  But standing in front of the enormous wooden door at her destination, clutching the envelope that George had entrusted to her, Hannah felt anything but ready to present herself. Before she could decide whether it would be worse to stay or flee, the door was hurled open as if by an angry elf, and there was Mary Somerville herself, a diminutive figure with a nimbus of white hair, bristling with energy at six and sixty.

  “Come in, please. Come in!” she commanded. “Albertina has the afternoon off, but thankfully she left something for us, so we shan’t starve. Come! Close the door firmly, it sticks.”

  Hannah obeyed, then trotted down the long hallway after her hostess, feeling the urge to tiptoe so she wouldn’t scuff the floorplanks. They looked to be five hundred years old— like the door, like the Duomo, like everything in Italy Hannah had seen so far. It made her feel her own age acutely, and she wondered again why such an accomplished person had even made time to meet with her.

  Mrs. Somerville led Hannah into what could only be her study. The walls were papered in a deep scarlet, with worn rugs scattered about that looked as if they’d undergone an army of boots and slippers. A stack of books teetered on the small mahogany desk. On the small table between two overstuffed and uncomfortable chairs, a tea tray rested, two cups already poured out. A series of quills, inkpots, and tips were lined up on the desk at precise angles to the books and the blotter, and Hannah was relieved by this humble evidence of a familiar impulse to order.

  Mrs. Somerville pointed Hannah into a chair and poured her a cup of tea before saying a single word more. A cascade of her accomplishments paraded across the bookshelves: The Mechanism of the Heavens . . . On the Connexion of the Physical Sciences . . . a half dozen prominent journal articles. The very notion of a planet beyond Uranus. All from the mind of this woman. It was awesome and terrifying, like being in the throne room of scientific progress.

  “Tell me about your comet, then, Miss Price,” Mrs. Somerville demanded the instant she’d settled on the other chair. “It was the talk of the Continent last summer, you know.”

  Hannah blinked and returned her cup to the saucer, her hand shaking.

  “Well, I don’t know about that,” she said. “I can tell you that no one was more surprised than I to find my priority unchallenged.”

  “But why should you be surprised?” Mrs. Somerville stared at Hannah. Her gaze felt like a lighthouse beam, clear and cutting. “From what I understand, your diligence—and the quality of your eye—is quite well-known.”

  She paused, and clinked her own teacup down on the tray. “No need for modesty here, my dear.”

  “I don’t mean to be modest!” Hannah said, wishing she could start over. “Rather, my resources—our instruments—are nowhere near the caliber of those used by other sweepers, and they are no doubt as diligent as myself. We’ve only a Dollond—and not a new one, either.”

  Mrs. Somerville didn’t respond, so Hannah leaned closer and raised her voice.

  “I meant that the Dollond surprised everyone, especially me.”

  Her hostess nodded vigorously.

  “Sometimes an old workhorse can surpass a team of colts,” she said, and burst out laughing like a raucous schoolgirl. “But what of the rest?”

  “The rest?” Hannah wondered if she was being tested. She swallowed, and reminded herself that she’d been invited.

  Mary Somerville waved a slender hand in the air above their heads as if to indicate the whole of the galaxy. “Where does Miss Price turn her gaze these days? Toward the nebulae, I hope. Resolution should be the top priority for every astronomer in the world, I say.”

  “Certainly, when I am able—that is, when I visit the Bonds.”

  “Ah, William! And his boy.”

  “George.”

  “Yes. I saw them not a year ago at the international conference. Young Bond was quite interested in image-making. We’ve yet to make the attempt here on the Continent.”

  “Indeed he is. In fact, he entrusted me with something to show you.”

  Hannah drew a square envelope from the leather folder she’d carried in her trunk from place to place all the months of her journey, then unfolded the paper carefully and held out her treasure with two hands. They shook.

  “What’s this?” Mrs. Somerville squinted, then used her hands as levers to rise from the chair. “Can’t see well. Nor hear. But everything else is in order. Come over to the window, dear, and show me.
”

  Hannah bore the photograph over like a jeweled crown on a satin cushion and laid it carefully on the window seat so Mrs. Somerville could see it in the light.

  “It is the very first of those images you speak of,” Hannah said, as slowly and clearly as she was able. “It is a photograph of the stars Mizar and Alcor.”

  “Yes,” Mrs. Somerville whispered, leaning close over it. “I see.”

  “George took this a month ago. He’s been able to get even clearer images since then. They’re quite wonderful. He’s devoting nearly all his time to spectroscopy—the lenses, of course, and how he might capture the colors of the stars as well as their luminosity.” Hannah heard the pride she felt in her voice. George had found his calling after all these years, and it dovetailed with William’s relief that his son was contributing something he deemed scientifically worthy.

  “Splendid!” Mrs. Somerville tapped the photograph lightly with her finger. “The future of knowledge, I predict. Here on the Continent we have the history, the practice, the instruments . . . but you Americans, you have the modern impulse. We must depend on your ingenuity!”

  She reached over and squeezed Hannah’s arm, her grip so firm, it sent a jolt through Hannah’s body.

  “Now let us go into the rose garden. I must walk each afternoon, lest these bones forget they yet have work ahead of them.”

  Hannah trailed behind as Mrs. Somerville listed the varieties she’d grown, their ages and qualities. In the last light of the day, the flowers blazed as if to defy their own transience.

  “I had a letter from Dr. Whewell recently,” Mrs. Somerville said. “I cannot abide the amount of time he spends on preposterous ideas. Why shouldn’t another planet be inhabited by reasoned beings? I ask.” She paused, and Hannah realized she was expected to answer.

  “I suppose it would be difficult to prove,” Hannah said carefully, not wanting to take sides.

  “So what? A higher order of beings might people every corner of the galaxy. The fact that we cannot yet prove their existence shouldn’t encourage working to disprove the very possibility! It’s anathema to truth.”

  Hannah shook her head.

  “I’m not sure I understand.”

  “Reason is not the only path to enlightenment, my dear. One must have vision! And passion. One must not forsake feeling for fact.” She squinted at Hannah. “Do you have much religious feeling?”

  Hannah searched for a truthful answer.

  “I did at one time. But my mind is unsettled. My father always quoted Edward Young.”

  “ ‘An undevout astronomer is mad.’ ”

  “Yes.” Hannah nodded, and her throat tightened, thinking of the tiny window through which she observed her first stars. The metronome ticked close to her ear; she counted seconds for her father. Mrs. Somerville’s clippers snapped dead branches.

  “And yet, one must acknowledge the coexistence,” the older wo- man said.

  “The coexistence?” Hannah felt strung between the past and the future, a timid girl beside an imposing elder. But she had contributed something; she was here.

  “Of uncertainty and faith, my dear. No matter how fervent our passion for the works of our Creator, there will in minds such as our own always exist the potential for that which we cannot understand. For we are limited, are we not? We are simply prisoners in our current form, blown about by our emotions and so forth. It’s a rare individual who can overcome her own Nature—and why should she? If this is our Nature, then I say we must embrace it until the next life.” Mrs. Somerville stepped back to survey the shape she’d made. “ ‘The Heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament showeth forth his handiwork,’ ” she singsonged.

  Snip, snip. Two final, slender branches fell to Earth, one at each woman’s feet.

  Mrs. Somerville looked up and smiled like an indulgent grandmother, which made Hannah feel even more like a child. Hannah had devoted herself to everything she had been taught—all that she could apply reason to—at the expense of everything else. Forsaking feeling for fact was exactly what had cost her Isaac. What if she had chosen differently?

  Mrs. Somerville had children, and a husband, yet she’d made the greatest of contributions. She’d forsaken nothing. Or so it seemed. Of course, her situation was different. Such a union with Isaac would simply not have been possible.

  “I expect to hear great things from you, Miss Price,” Mary Somerville called as Hannah went back through the enormous wooden doors. And then, as if she could read Hannah’s thoughts, she added, “Keep your mind open to possibility!”

  As she left Mrs. Somerville’s, Hannah felt intimidated and enlivened, as if she had just woken from a powerful dream in which something important had been revealed. It glinted, just out of reach. But it was there.

  * As the months of travel wore on, though, the glimmer of promise and potential began to flicker. The longer Hannah spent wandering the streets of the clamorous cities, immersed in the jabber of foreign tongues and the treasures of the world’s greatest museums, the farther away she felt from home.

  * Once you told me that you understood how time and distance are the same, at sea, Hannah wrote in one of a series of letters to Isaac, which she posted with less and less hope that he would receive or respond to. How the longer you are away from home, the farther you feel from it. I understand this now, though it does not seem to apply to you; the longer I am away from you, the more I long to be near you. Still, she kept writing, unsure if her missives were an act of penance or an act of faith. She only knew that she needed to share what she was experiencing with Isaac. She had to speak to him, even if he did not speak back.

  Mrs. Hapwell also instructed Hannah in the fine art of visiting, from what to put on her calling cards (“Just your name, dear: it speaks for itself”) to which invitations to decline (“She only wants you there because she heard you were all the rage”). But the one place Hannah needed no help was in the observatories of Europe, where she found herself as at home among the instruments and charts as she had ever been, and welcomed as a peer, which shocked and amused her.

  Even as she felt her mind expanding to accommodate both the modern innovations of the observatories and the antiquities and masterpieces of old in the museums, as the months wore on, and spring gave way to summer, Hannah missed home all the more. The hard sidewalks and soaring cathedrals of Europe were beginning to grind her down, the arches of one great structure blending into the pillars of another until she finally abandoned her Handbook for Travellers on the Continent in the Galleria dell’Accademia, unable to absorb another word, and circled back to the statue of David where she’d left her twelve-year-old charge, Desdemona.

  The girl couldn’t have been less like her mother: she was dreamy, lethargic, prone to losing anything not sewn to her person, and spectac ularly unsociable. But she loved art, and as Hannah curled her hands around Desi’s small shoulders, she found herself drawn into the lines of the male figure, the angles of his enormous fingers and feet. The curve of his knuckles, his jaw, his ear, made Hannah’s mind leap to Isaac, and the familiar dull ache of longing thudded through her. Only when another visitor drew up beside her did she shake loose from the intoxicating memory and reluctantly steer Desi away.

  The remaining weeks of her travels seemed to fly by, and as the day of her departure grew closer, Hannah found herself torn between conflicting sets of emotions. She was excited to see Edward and Mary, who’d returned to Nantucket in time for the birth of their son, Moses. She could hardly wait to meet her new nephew; to reunite with Millicent and Elizabeth; and to walk the familiar shores and breathe the sea air of home. But she was equally anxious about returning to a future that was almost as uncertain as it had been before she ever found the comet.

  . 30 . Homecoming

  The carriage jolted over the cobblestones as they neared the port of New Bedford, and Hannah blinked herself awake and stretched her neck, mopping her brow with her damp handkerchief. She pulled back the curtain and look
ed out the window. Swarms of people were moving in the direction of the Nantucket packet. Men in pale suits and women in summer dresses lugged valises and baskets and small children in the direction of the ferry, while seamen of every hue cut through the crowds, chins up, chests out.

  And as far as she could see, hundreds— maybe thousands—of barrels of oil were laid out in neat rows, covering nearly every foot of wharf. The heat shimmered the late June air above them as if they were holy. It reminded Hannah of the gilded halos around the portraits of saints she’d seen everywhere in Italy. The Madonnas and children, the Thomas Aquinases and Theresas.

  She opened the window, letting in the hot, putrid air, then stuck her arm out and rapped on the roof.

  “I’ll walk from here,” she shouted to the driver, and leapt down when the team stilled. He passed her valise and tipped his cap, a gesture she was still uncomfortable with, even after nearly a year on the Continent, where the men bowed and dipped like toy boats every time a woman came within fifty paces. Hannah nodded, trying to be gracious, but when he offered to carry her valise to the ferry, she shook her head.

  “No need,” she said, waving him off when he stood to leap down. “It’s quite light.”

  One pair of new boots, five new dresses, her journal, and the hat upon her head: Hannah felt weightless as a dandelion, floating toward home. She still had no idea what would come next, but now that she was close enough to smell the salt in the air, the uncertainty had its own peculiar thrill; she felt sure-footed in spite of it.

  She slowed down when she saw the line for the packet, which stretched nearly a quarter mile. It was only half- ten but she’d be lucky if she made it onto the noon boat. Sighing, she put down her valise and sat on it, fanning herself with a broadsheet as chatter whizzed through the air. When the line edged forward, Hannah rose and shuffled along. At this rate she’d never get home.