The Conjurer's Bird

by Martin Davies

  “Well then…Each leaf shows the standard indentations and each…” Suddenly he paused. “I see,” he said. “You are right to be impatient with me. The acorns have no stalks, they are connected directly to the twig. And the leaves have long stalks. This is a sessile oak, not an English oak. And found in the park, you say? I know of sessile oaks in Wales, but I have never heard of them occurring here.”

  She nodded, her eyes bright. “It is interesting, isn’t it? In case you think my observation is at fault, the original sample is over there, by the window. You can see for yourself.”

  From that conversation they moved on to other native trees, and Banks talked of the variations on familiar themes that he had found in his travels. It was only when he had forgotten the mood of his arrival that she drew his mind back to it. They were discussing a study she had done of beech leaves when she suddenly turned to him and said, “You must not think me ungrateful.”

  For a moment he was unbalanced by her directness and unsure how to respond.

  “All this, I mean.” She waved her hand as if to embrace the room, the house, and everything around them. “I thank you for it every day. More often than that. And I realize you scarcely know me. It must appear to you a random act of kindness.”

  He was honest enough to nod at this.

  “That is how I explain things to myself,” he replied. “I call it a generous impulse, a making good of Revesby’s faults. And I think myself a warmhearted fellow.” He paused, still looking at her. “And yet there is something in the time we spend together that marks it as different. I came here today to patronize you. I know I did. But within moments of seeing you I remembered why it’s not possible. You have never given me the opportunity.”

  She smiled a little sadly. “This place. My position here. It’s the model of respectability. I look after an infirm old woman. I walk in the fresh air, properly accompanied. I draw a little. I dress respectably. Strangers might take me for a saint. But we both know that isn’t true. There is something we have never spoken of…” She looked away, uncertain of her words. “Of the fact that the object of your charity is no longer what they call a maiden.”

  Suddenly the joy went out of him. “Please,” he said, standing abruptly. “We have no need to talk of it. It pains me to think of it.”

  She moved a little farther away from him.

  “And yet,” she said softly, “I cannot help but think that perhaps the pain is more mine than yours.” She paused a little while her words hung in the air between them. “And you do me no favor by pretending I am what I am not.”

  He rode back to London that evening a more thoughtful man than when he’d set out that morning with the sun still high.

  EVEN THOUGH he was only three months returned from the Endeavour, he began to plan for his next long voyage. Cook had received word from the Admiralty to prepare for a second expedition, and Banks was invited to go with him. The success of their first venture had been so spectacular that a second had never been in doubt, but he was surprised how quickly it was proposed, with less than a year between the date of their return and their next departure.

  It never occurred to him to decline the opportunity. Before the first voyage he had almost had to beg before permission was granted for him to join the venture. This time there could be no choice but him. The public expected it, Cook spoke strongly in favor, and the Royal Society supported him. The general assumption that it could be no one but Banks gave him tremendous satisfaction. It was not an assumption he felt inclined to dispute.

  Nevertheless, it came too soon. There was much work to be done on the describing of his Endeavour collection, and he was still reveling in the success of that voyage, still enjoying the high tide that swept him through London society. Introductions and invitations were reaching him from all quarters, and he had begun to form the center of a circle of eager young men who, he felt, could between them make a difference to the world they lived in. He felt that with another three years in London he could begin to shape the course of botany for a generation or more. At home in London his ideas seemed set to flourish and take root. At sea he would once again be no more than one part of the ship’s complement, no more entitled than the ship’s carpenters to decide what course should be set.

  And then there was Harriet. Relations between them had never recovered from their three years apart. On his return from Lincolnshire he had called on her most promptly. He explained to her his plan to go abroad again, used it to show the impossibility of his ever making a proper husband. The news of a second expedition so quickly after the first was not well received. There were tears when he first spoke of it, and reproaches that it was an excuse to break his promise. Finally, back in her guardian’s rose garden, they began to address each other as they truly felt. She accused him of reneging on his promise, of making her an object of pity and ridicule. But, she said, it would be equally ridiculous for her to continue an understanding with a man who never intended to remain in London long enough to visit a church. On his part he pointed out that his ambitions to travel had never been a secret. He declared that on his return he had fully intended their nuptials to go ahead, but he had found such a change in her that he had hardly felt it right to go on. An interview with her guardian followed, very tense and very formal. Banks regretted that he was not, as he had hoped, in a position to marry at this time; his travels prevented it. As he knew it was unreasonable to make the lady wait, he sought to be freed from his engagement. Frank words were exchanged. An agreement was reached. Banks left feeling guilty and miserable—and, to his own shame, greatly relieved.

  One of the few places where his spirits were never low was the little house in Richmond. It seemed to exist on a different continent from his London life, and the fears and concerns he took with him appeared petty and vain on his arrival there. She would listen to him quietly when he wanted to talk, but more often he found himself dismissing it all from his mind and talking about science again, newly alive with ideas and optimism. It was as if he had discovered a world where only the elements of himself that felt pure and genuine were able to flourish. He took to sharing with her the botanical ideas he had only half formed, and always when he left her they were a little more ordered, a fraction closer to being ready for the scrutiny of his peers. And yet, despite these escapes to Richmond, his plans for a second voyage began of necessity to take shape.

  One November morning, nearly three months after her arrival in Richmond, he had arranged to accompany her and Mrs. Jenkins to Hampton Court. He called for them early in his carriage, only to be greeted at the door with the news that Mrs. Jenkins could not go. After an awkward few minutes of confusion, it was agreed that Martha should travel in her stead, and as the carriage rumbled along the banks of the Thames with Martha dozing in one corner, he found himself talking at length about his next voyage.

  As always, he had underestimated her. He had expected her to ask about the effect of his absence on her own position, on the Richmond establishment, about the date of his likely return—even about her position should he not return. Instead every step they took around the ancient palace was accompanied by questions about the details of the proposed expedition. She wanted to know everything: what orders Cook sailed under, what course was to be set, what his own hopes and aspirations were for the voyage. He found himself discussing at length the possibilities of new continents in the southern latitudes, what conditions could exist there, what life such land might support. And then she moved on to details of navigation: what instruments would be used, what equipment taken, what methods did he most trust for the calculation of longitude? And of design, would the vessel be another collier? Of mortality at sea, what could be done to reduce it? Of the crew, who would go? Who would be new, who tried and seasoned?

  When the carriage rolled gently to a halt in Richmond, their conversation was still far from flagging. She looked out of the window in dismay.

  “Here so soon? And I still have questions to ask!” It was agreed eve
ntually that Martha, who was dozing again, would be allowed to get down and warn Mrs. Jenkins of a delay in their return while the carriage took a turn around the park. As the carriage rolled forward again, she turned to him and said, “One thing disappoints me. You seem too little excited at the prospect ahead of you. Were I a man, there would be nothing else I could talk about.”

  “Is that so? Yet when we first met in the Revesby woods, I was only a few weeks away from such an expedition and surely I remember that we scarcely talked of it. Our conversation was of lichen and woodland flowers.”

  “Oh, but do not tell me you were not excited! You had a shine about you then that spoke of excitement in everything you did or saw or said.”

  “And do I not have that shine now?”

  She looked at him and her eyes were suddenly tender.

  “You are different now. Making your way. It was new to you then. Now you have the world a little on your shoulders.”

  It was a cue to pass to another subject, but he felt a sadness at her words that seemed to prevent it.

  “So I shine to you less?”

  Although it was still bright outside, the inside of the carriage was in shadow. She wanted to reach out and take his hand and tell him that nothing shone in her life so brightly as he. But instead she searched for words that she was permitted to say.

  “You shine with a different luster now,” she said softly. “You have less time for the things most real to you.”

  “Yes,” he said after a moment’s thought. “I think that’s true.”

  And suddenly, looking at her, looking into her green eyes, without planning or reason, he went on. “And I discover that one of the things most real is you.”

  They were already seated close to each other, and when he saw she was silent in surprise, he wanted to reach out and touch her cheek and tell her gently, “It’s true, though I have only just known it.” And as she looked up at his troubled face, she thought to run her fingers into his hair and tell him that it was all right, that she knew, that even when he didn’t know, she knew. And when she said nothing he wished they were back in the Revesby woods, where it would have been very easy to lean forward, closer to her lips. And when he did move forward very slightly, her eyes opened wide and said yes. So he reached across and let his fingers touch her cheek and a voice in his head he had never heard before told him, This is what love is, and he leaned forward and she saw the pleading in his face, and as she felt the first, warm touch of his lips, she found her own mouth moving softly under his and heard somewhere far removed the words “I love you.”

  Katya flew off to Sweden and left me fretting behind her. Two days of desperate searching seemed to have got us nowhere. There were no archives left in the city that between us we hadn’t covered, and there was still no clear indication that Miss B had died in London in 1774. But if she hadn’t died, where had she gone? She could have moved anywhere in London, to another man, another name, another parish. Even if we knew what the B stood for, it would still be impossible to find her. So instead, after banging my head against the futility of the question, I decided to speculate a little. If it was impossible to find where she’d gone, perhaps we could at least find where she had come from. That prospect didn’t seem so impossible. According to the Town & Country Magazine, Banks had known her before he sailed with Cook, at a time when she was still of school age. Even though I was inclined to treat that account with caution, there must have been some core of truth behind it. Then, when Banks got back three years later, she was old enough to become his mistress. So that would make her between thirteen and sixteen when Banks sailed. So if I believed my own reasoning, she must have been born sometime between 1752 and 1755.

  What else could I work out? When Banks returned he had felt the need to rescue her from economic distress and restore her to some degree of social respectability, so her background, while impoverished, was not beyond the social pale. But where did the wealthy Joseph Banks meet someone of schoolgirl age from such an impoverished background? As a young man about town, Banks would have had male friends with younger sisters, but they were surely unlikely to die and leave their sisters destitute. And if they had, I was sure the gossip-mongers would refer to it. It didn’t seem like the sort of connection that would have been easy to keep secret.

  Of course, she could have been a tradesman’s daughter or the daughter of one of the professional men he met in his day-to-day affairs. But I wasn’t completely convinced that young aristocrats formed relationships so easily with the daughters of their tradesmen. For now I was prepared to hope they didn’t. The option I kept coming back to was very different: Lincolnshire.

  Banks inherited Revesby Abbey when he was still a young man, and took his responsibilities seriously. He’d have been aware of the financial predicaments of the families around his estates, and it wouldn’t be unconventional for a beneficent landowner to concern himself with the plight of an orphaned girl whose family had once been his neighbors. The village of Revesby would have been a relatively small place, after all. Small enough, in fact, to make a search of the parish records a reasonable enough idea. Even without a whole name to search for, it might be possible to turn something up.

  Directory Enquiries gave me the number of the Lincolnshire County Archives, and the woman I spoke to there couldn’t have been more helpful. Yes, she thought they had the parish records for Revesby. She’d check. After a pause she came back. Yes, the Revesby records were on microfilm. Yes, I could come in and check them anytime during opening hours.

  I think it was her helpfulness that decided me. She made it sound as though everything was possible. I had a couple of days to play with, and I still had the keys to the rusty yellow car. I set off the following day.

  Lincoln is a striking city. The hill it stands on lurches out of the surrounding flatness, topped by a cathedral that is all vertical lines reaching for the sky. The modern town sprawls around its base and contains, along with a lot of modern shops, a labyrinthine one-way system that eventually led me to a long-stay carpark. By then it was already after four and too late to begin at the archives, so instead I hauled my bag out of the car, slung it over my shoulder, and set off up the hill to find myself somewhere to stay. It felt like a holiday and I was going to enjoy myself. Eventually I found a small, plush hotel near the top of the hill, tucked into the knot of old streets immediately below the cathedral. It was the sort of place where every room was different and the walls and floors did not always meet at right angles. The reception area was thickly carpeted in red, and the desk was the old-fashioned type with a bell and a visitors’ book instead of a computer. It felt warm and smelled of wood fires and somewhere out of sight there were bottles clinking gently as though someone was restocking the bar. It was also phenomenally expensive, but just then it didn’t seem to matter. I was feeling reckless and, if this was all just folly, let it at least be folly on a noble scale.

  That night I had dinner in a little restaurant close to the hotel and read a crumpled detective story from the hotel library. After dinner I sat up late by the fire in the hotel bar, drinking big glasses of brandy and feeling that all was well with the world. And it was: at least until the following morning, when I left my bag at reception and strode off to find the county archives. They turned out to be friendly and modern and every bit as helpful as they had promised to be. A pleasant-faced woman with glasses sorted out my reader’s card and gave me a form to fill in about the records I was after.

  “Revesby parish from 1750,” she read when I handed it back. “No problem.” Then she paused and her pen hovered over the form. “And what name is it you’re looking for? It’s just for our records, really.”

  She looked up when I hesitated.

  “I really don’t know,” I told her honestly. “I only know it begins with B and ends with n. It might have five letters in it, but I can’t even be sure of that.”

  She raised an eyebrow at that, and I guessed she was relegating me from serious researcher t
o whimsical eccentric. Even so, she showed me where to find the relevant microfilms and then left me to get on with it.

  I’d been right about Revesby being a small place. It was the record of births that I was interested in, and it wasn’t a long or difficult morning’s work to list all the girls born between 1750 and 1760 whose names might fit the bill. My list for Revesby came out like this:

  Jan. 1, 1750

  Mary, bastard daughter of—

  Sept. 29, 1752

  Mary, daughter of Richard Burnett & Elizabeth his wife

  April 18, 1756

  Mary, daughter of James Browne & Susanna his wife

  Feb. 20, 1757

  Mary, daughter of William Burton & Anne his wife

  Jan. 18, 1761

  Elizabeth, daughter of James Browne & Susanna his wife

  When I sat back and looked at it, I wasn’t sure what I’d found, apart from a clear fondness among the Revesby parishioners for the name Mary. The name that leapt out at me was Burton, but there was a Browne there, too, and I wasn’t too worried about the e on the end—spelling was fluid back then, and the e might easily have got lost later. And although Mary Burton and Mary Browne were both on the young side, about twelve or thirteen when Banks set off on his voyage, either of them could have grown up to become Miss B. I realized as I wound back the microfilm that my fingers were trembling very slightly. I felt I was getting somewhere.

  My next step was to run a check. I knew from Town & Country that Miss B had become an orphan while Banks was away, so I went back and looked at Revesby’s record of deaths. This wasn’t foolproof, of course. Miss B’s father could have died somewhere quite different. But it was worth a try. A quick check of those years came up with the deaths of only four adult males, but William Burton was one of them.