The School of Night

by Louis Bayard

  —One might see the moon for true, she says, lowering the glass to her side.

  —Why, yes, the moon. In all its—all its particularity. We may prove with some degree of confidence that it is not composed of green cheese.

  Or tired stars, she thinks. That’s what her father used to tell her when she was a girl. Every night, the sleepiest stars would swim down to the moon and lie there a short while—until they felt ready to climb back up.

  —Sir.

  —Yes?

  —May I look one last time?

  —Of course.

  Once again the moon shivers into view: not quite full, or real, but giddy with itself. Why is it she can never find a word equal to the experience?

  And why should she bother? The world is conversing quite enough. Frogs, whippoorwills, barn owls, nightjars, bobwhites … churring and jangling and now and then rhyming in some perverse way. Off to the south, the midnight bells, dividing the sound into pulses. And the moon somehow riding atop it all.

  She hears the master’s voice, low and firm.

  —Yes. I should say so.

  She looks up at him.

  —Sir?

  —I should say the nighttime would do rather well.

  She gives her head a shake.

  —Pardon, he says. —I was merely considering the, the maximal conditions for inquiries of an optical nature. It seems to me that the nighttime, with its more intense contrasts of light and dark, might permit us more detailed measurements. Of refraction and, and the like.

  The us is not lost on her. Or him. He slaps the heels of his boots together.

  —As we have already determined, the Gollivers are quite insensible this time of evening. We should be left to ourselves, I should think. Barring any more bonfires.

  He is seeking her consent, she understands this now. She understands, too, that sleep is the one luxury left to her. For what seems to her an eternity, she stands there, in the very pitch of night.

  —As you wish, sir.

  23

  THE NEXT EVENING, just past the stroke of nine, she is there.

  At first blush, there is nothing so different in meeting at this hour. The work is largely the same: laborious measurements, recorded row after row. The room is no darker than before, except that the shadows run deeper and the light carves harder.

  And there is this difference, too: The act of transcription, which had a certain enchantment by daylight, becomes at night a form of penance. Her hand drags along the paper, the figures swim in and out of focus. Even the master’s voice subsides, for seconds altogether, into an undifferentiated buzzing.

  Does he notice her inattention? Does he even know she’s in the room? It’s true there are times when he will cease muttering to himself and address her directly. Now and then, he will even make an effort to explain something to her—the computation of sines and cosines, say—but even this carries a professorial tone. And though her Latin is good, she has had only the rudiments of geometry. She knows what a right angle is but not a hypotenuse. Trigonometry is as explicable to her as Aramaic.

  —Of course, what makes the sine and cosine functions so especially telling, Margaret, is that they are not dependent upon the size of the triangle. They are merely expressions of the relations between angles.…

  —Yes, sir.

  The words cascade over her, and she seems to evaporate beneath them. And then he calls out another measurement, and her hand scrawls it down, and the work goes on.

  Angulus refractus … hdb per calculum … in aqua incidentia …

  And when the work is done for the night, he takes his rest with a common man’s relish. Pulls out his pipe, fills it with tobacco, lights it by the nearest candle, and drinks it in. The smoke billows across the room in shivering spirals: a new layer of sting to Margaret’s already smarting eyes.

  At some point, she finds voice enough to excuse herself. His head angles toward her.

  —Good night, then. My thanks.

  Leaving, she always steals a look back, but he is always exactly as she left him. Still seated. No sign of retiring himself.

  Then again, he may sleep as late as he likes. Margaret, on most nights, is abed by one and up again four hours later. For a week or so, the terror of being found out is enough to keep her in motion, but as the short nights bleed into the long days, she finds it harder and harder to hear the cock’s crow. One morning she has to be wakened by Mrs. Golliver.

  —Lazy girl!

  She snatches sleep where she can; more often, it snatches her. In the midst of sweeping the study, she must lean against a wall or risk giving way altogether. Bending over a bucket of wash, she wakes to find her head resting on the bucket’s rim. In the midst of dressing a bed, she actually tumbles into it, as though it were a pond.

  Her undoing comes on a Friday morning in April. She is carrying a skirtful of eggs from the henyard when some combination of sun and wind throws a dazzle into her eye. She weaves for a few seconds—a Southwark cock on its last legs—then falls chest-first to the ground.

  It is the wetness that rouses her. The eggs, crushed by her weight, seep through her skirt, throw a chill into her skin. She rolls over … waits for the blood to return to her head … and then opens her eyes to the livid specter of Mr. Golliver.

  —Have you taken ill, my girl?

  She could pretend she had, but they might call in a physician. Or even the steward.

  —I am sorry, sir. I appear to have lost my balance.

  —That is not the picture that presents itself to me. The picture that presents itself to me is of a girl deficient in duty.

  Slowly, in stages, she rises to her feet. Surveys that strangely shaming puddle on her skirt.

  —It shall not happen again, sir.

  —No. It shall not.

  Seizing Margaret by the sleeve, he marches her through the back door. And as they pass the kitchen, Mrs. Golliver, answering to some silent alarum, falls into line behind them.

  To the Tower, thinks Margaret, in her befogged state. We’re off to the Tower.

  The master is doing what he always does this time of day. Composing his correspondence.

  —Yes?

  —Master, we have dire news.

  There follows the arraignment. She cannot help but be awed by the litany of her offenses. Oversleeping, inadequate dusting, overhaste, underhaste, effrontery, sluttishness. The excess of it is very nearly amusing, and in fact she must smother her laugh when Mrs. Golliver, warming to her subject, shouts:

  —Does she think eggs grow on trees?

  Through the whole recitation, the temple of the master’s hands holds firm. The only unstable part of him is his eyes, which range from Golliver to Golliver, from floor to ceiling, and then rest with a peculiar intangible discomfort on Margaret’s skirt, stinking with sulfur.

  The room falls silent. In a voice barely audible, the master says:

  —I believe you have apprehended the wrong malefactor.

  —Sir?

  —If Margaret is indeed unequipped to carry out her duties, it is because I have been most selfishly claiming her time for my own uses.

  Mr. Golliver’s mouth folds over the word as if it were a piece of gristle.

  —Uses?

  —Experiments, yes, of a highly sensitive nature. And of sufficient importance to both Crown and Church that they must be conducted after hours. Lest they be compromised.

  And now it is Mrs. Golliver’s turn to work through the implications.

  —At night?

  Margaret sinks onto the nearest stool. Closes her eyes. She would float away altogether if the master’s voice weren’t pulling her back to earth.

  —My apologies, Mrs. Golliver. I neglected to inform you of my decision.

  —Decision, sir?

  —Upon deliberation, I believe the time is ripe for engaging a laboratory assistant.

  Margaret fingers her lids apart—and is astonished to find every pair of eyes in the room resting on hers. And still s
he cannot grasp what has happened until she hears the master continue.

  —I trust you will be able to start at once, Margaret. No, not at once. Take until week’s end to recover yourself. A good night’s sleep or two should be all the cure needed. We cannot be having any more accidents for Mrs. Golliver to clean up.

  A dreadful silence then, broken by the old woman’s cry.

  —It will not do!

  —It cannot! cries the old man.

  —I fear it must, says Harriot.

  —But who will perform Margaret’s duties?

  —The steward was good enough to send her our way. I hold great confidence in his ability to discover a new girl every bit as competent.

  Only now do the Gollivers fully understand: They have a new master. Who will require new tacks.

  In a voice teeming with subtlety, Mr. Golliver says:

  —I am not at all sure what the earl will say about this.

  —I thank you for recalling it to me, Golliver. If memory serves, I am engaged with His Grace tomorrow afternoon, from the hours of one until three. I shall take it up with him then. I have no fear he can be persuaded on the matter. We ask him for so little, do we not, Golliver?

  For several seconds longer, the master holds their gaze. Then, with a smile of apology, he gestures toward his correspondence.

  —I pray now you will leave me to my labors. As I shall leave you to yours. Oh, Golliver?

  —Sir.

  —I thank you for calling the matter to my notice. Good day.

  24

  THE EARL OF Northumberland is the possessor of one of England’s great libraries: scores upon scores of moldering volumes, tattooed with his marginalia. It says something, then, of his character that he so freely forsakes their company for Nature’s library.

  On this particular afternoon in April, he is seated beneath a willow tree, overlooking the Isleworth Mill Stream. He holds an angling rod in his right hand, his boots are smeared in spring mud, his breathing is slow and even. One could almost imagine him young again.

  In marked contrast is his companion, whose black garments give him the look of a rain cloud invading the willow’s sanctuary. Thomas Harriot brings to angling the same zeal for the definite that seizes him in his laboratory. Indeed, the only way he can justify these outings to himself is by supposing that he and the earl are inching toward inviolable scientific principles that will light the way for all future generations of fishers.

  Today, those principles are elusive: The two men have not caught a single trout in two hours. This despite the fact that Harriot has personally designed their flies from black wool and drake’s feathers. Should he have painted the feathers’ undersides yellow? Should he first have immersed them in fennel? Should he have given them another fortnight’s weathering?

  In this manner, Harriot becomes wholly lost to the present: the singing of willow branches, the light and motion embracing on the stream’s surface. The only thing that can halt his mind’s revolutions is the sound of the earl clearing his throat.

  —My dear Tom. As regards this laboratory assistant of yours …

  There is no conclusion to the sentence. The earl merely leaves a space of silence into which Harriot must now dash.

  —The truth is, Your Grace, I have long required an assistant and have been too proud to ask. As matters now stand, I am obliged to waylay others of your retinue, which lays an unacceptable strain upon your estate and your hospitality.

  How dry his mouth is.

  —More to the present point, I have embarked on a particularly sensitive stage of my optics work, and I find the contributions of Miss Crookenshanks to be invaluable in forwarding these inquiries to their, their hoped-for end.

  And still the earl is silent.

  —Naturally, Your Grace, I have no intention of placing any additional burden upon the Gollivers, who have been ever loyal to me. If new housemaids are wanting, I am perfectly content to bear all consequences. Disorder, dust, slovenliness—I should be the last to complain. Or even notice.

  The earl switches the angling rod to his left hand, gives a pair of soft tugs on the line, then resettles himself against the willow’s trunk.

  —You are quite resolved on this point, Tom?

  —I should never have broached it if I were not.

  —And you are bound and determined to engage this particular person?

  —I am.

  Another tug on the line.

  —How shall I make my meaning felt, Tom? If it’s companionship you require—no, pray hear me out—if it’s a companion you’re after, I should be the last man in Christendom to begrudge you one. You needn’t create a want merely to … justify some other want.

  The very delicacy of his language drives Harriot in the opposite direction.

  —Miss Crookenshanks is not my lover.

  —I impute no dishonor to you, Tom, I am merely puzzled. If memory serves aright, you have never taken a direct interest in the affairs of any servant. What, then, is so extraordinary about this one?

  —I don’t know that I can say.

  —Pretty, is she?

  —Perhaps. Not so very. I don’t know.

  The earl laughs.

  —I fear you will never be a sonneteer.

  —My respect for her, Your Grace, has nothing to do with her person. She has a quality, which I confess I am sore pressed to define.

  —Do your best.

  Harriot stares across the stream, where a sycamore is futilely waving at him.

  —I think it is this, Your Grace. She has not yet resigned herself to the world’s ways as other girls might in her situation. She is fighting toward the light. Only she no longer perceives that she is.

  —How then do you perceive it?

  —Because I was the same way at her age. When I look at her, I see myself.

  The earl smiles absently. Shakes his head.

  —The two of you could hardly be more opposed, Tom. You are a man, with a man’s capacities. You cannot expect Nature to equip a woman in the same fashion.

  —Your Grace, I do not pretend to know what Nature intends for the sexes. I only know that if I were Margaret’s age and someone had told me that I might not—might not learn … might not hurl myself at the world and all its mysteries, its possibilities … If it’s a question of money, Your Grace, I will happily remunerate her from my own account.

  —Oh, money. I hemorrhage it by the hour. No physician could have bled me more conscientiously than has my own estate.

  The earl stretches out his legs and lets his fishing rod dangle for a moment in the water.

  —Very well, Tom, you may consider your petition granted.

  —Your Grace—

  —And in return, you will be so good as to grant my petition.

  The earl lowers his voice by no more than a degree.

  —On Sunday, the eighth of June, Syon House is to be given the unspeakable and exalted honor of hosting His Majesty the King of England. I have told no one but you. And having paid you that signal compliment, I must balance out the scales with an insult.

  —Your Grace?

  —I must kindly entreat you to stay away.

  Their eyes lock. The earl is the first to look away.

  —You are a casualty, Tom, of our uncertain age. Being still green in office, the king vacillates daily as to who is with him and who against. There is one man, lamentably, about whom he has never vacillated.

  —Sir Walter.

  —His Majesty regards our friend as a gangrenous limb. Once he begins cutting off one appendage, what is to save all the limbs connected thereto?

  —So you mean to stem the tide of infection.

  —I mean to protect you, Tom. And all of us. You are better known in court circles than you know. Once the king’s eyes fall on you, he will be put in mind of Sir Walter. This will then recall to him that so-called School of Atheism. Before another second has passed, the king will be put out of humor altogether. I cannot afford for him to be put out of
humor.

  He does not use the word afford lightly. The earl holds this land on lease only. If he can ingratiate himself enough with the king, he may one day have Syon Park as a freehold.

  —I am glad at least that Your Grace has escaped the same taint as Sir Walter and I.

  —I have been at great pains, as you know, to scour myself. We shall see if my efforts are crowned.

  A touch of rue now comes to Master Harriot’s smile.

  —What more can I say, Your Grace? Show me to the nearest monastery. There I shall repair.

  —Do not forget we live on the grounds of an abbey. Your own house should be cloister enough.

  The earl exhales. Puts his hand on the smaller man’s shoulder.

  —As I remember, court life has never much agreed with you.

  —That is so.

  —Live, then, in this hope. That once I have persuaded the king of my intentions, I may woo him toward clemency. For you and Sir Walter.

  The earl’s head has drooped slightly to one side, and his eyes are half closed. An onlooker might suspect him of dozing were his voice not so lean and hard.

  —There is no sign of it, I suppose.

  —Sign of what, Your Grace?

  —Our dark treasure.

  That was Marlowe’s name for it. And how better to describe that product of a night’s labor: five men working until dawn, urging one another through their terrors … and all the more terrified to see what they had made.

  —The treasure, Your Grace, is as lost to me now as it was ten years ago.

  —Then we will pray it remains so. Of late, so many things seem intent on being found.

  He gazes into the Isleworth Mill Stream.

  —Excepting trout.

  OUTER BANKS, NORTH CAROLINA SEPTEMBER 2009

  25

  “A WOMAN?”

  With great effort, Alonzo managed to keep the Morning Glory muffin in his mouth. He took a swig of cranberry juice and, in the flintiest voice he could muster, declared:

  “There is no record of Thomas Harriot being with a woman.”

  “Well, that’s not quite true,” I said. “He had a sister; she’s mentioned in his will. He left bequests for a housekeeper, an assistant housekeeper. He socialized with Lady Ralegh, Lady Northumberland.…”