by Louis Bayard
It never occurred to him that the same act could be carried out at leisure, that it could be ushered in and teased along, savored and recollected, distilled … more verbs! There are days, indeed, when he imagines himself entirely reconjugated. And other days when he feels …
—Too old.
He says it once without even thinking. It is an hour or two before dawn, and they are in his fourposter, pressed against each other like mortise and tenon. His hand circles that miraculous thatch of honey-colored hair, that part of the female anatomy never before vouchsafed to him.
—Too old for what? she asks.
—For this. For you.
—Oh …
She reaches around him, caresses the space between his shoulder blades.
—How soft your skin is. A baby’s skin.
But there is nothing remotely maternal in the way her fingers scuttle down his ribs, hook around the blade of his pelvis. And this, too, is a revelation. That his body, which he has spent most of his life shrouding, might long for the light. That it might desire, might be desired.
He draws her closer. He feels her parting to admit him. Not in submission but in power, for when they have finished, he cannot help but gasp the same word.
—Stay.
And her reply is ever the same.
—It is late.
—An hour more …
She will not relent. And how he feels the lack of her when she is gone. This spartan bed, once barely large enough to contain him, yawns open. The linen holds her shape, the wool her scent.
One night, Harriot brings to bed an old bottle of spiritus dulcis, and the aroma of grapes and roses and candy so overcomes him he decants it, in slow dribs, across Margaret’s body and licks each drop away. She performs the same unction on him, and before they can even rise to a consummation, they have fallen asleep in each other’s arms.
Where they are found the next morning by Mrs. Golliver, sailing in like some raven spirit, eyes glittering, face frozen.
—Forgive me, Master. I—I thought …
The next afternoon, Harriot is summoned for an audience—unscheduled—with the Earl of Northumberland. They meet in the earl’s library, which, in keeping with the primacy he attaches to it, runs the entire length of the house’s northern front. The best river views may be found here, but the earl is always to be found facing the other way, toward those rows of books, with their sumptuous calf-leather covers, their calf-vellum pages, their gilt-ruled spines, their richly annotated pages.
—Reports have reached my ears, Tom.
Even in addressing him, the earl does not change his position so much as a hair. It is Harriot who must come to him.
—Do these reports concern my assistant?
—Yes.
—Do they emanate from my housekeeper?
The earl waits before answering.
—’Tis a fractious household of which you are master, Tom.
—I have never pretended to be its master.
—Nor I yours. In the normal sway of things, my steward would never worry my peace with domestic alarums. In your case, he has made an exception.
—I am grieved to have troubled him.
—Understand me, Tom, I would not shame you for the world. How you live is your concern. It pains me, however, to see your good name sullied by rumor.
—My name is not so good, perhaps, as you believe.
The earl studies him. Then slowly draws out an oaken armchair. Lowers himself into it and motions to Harriot to do the same.
—So it is true.
—That my heart has a claimant? Yes.
—Your heart.
The earl’s brows fork together. His hand passes before his lips.
—If Kit could see you now, Tom.…
—I hope he would not see as you do.
—And how am I in error?
—Your Grace believes I am casting myself away on a girl of low estate. You could not be more in the wrong. Margaret Crookenshanks possesses one of the finest—finest natural minds I have ever had the privilege to encounter. If you would but suffer me, I might show you some of the marvels she has effected with—
—Doctor Dee has wrought great marvels. So, too, Herr Kepler, they say. I do not believe you entertain the same passion for them.
Harriot folds his hands together. Lowers his head as if for a schoolmaster’s reprimand. And is all the more surprised to hear the earl’s gentle voice.
—Tell me, Tom.
—Yes?
—Is it a great wonder? This passion of yours.
—Much of the time it is terrible, Your Grace. Much of the time it is wondrous. And it is everything that lies between.
The earl nods, as if satisfied. Then rises and turns away.
—In that event, I suggest you pursue your inquiries to their natural end.
Taking this for dismissal, Harriot tenders his bow and makes for the doorway. The earl’s resonant drawl stops him two feet shy of freedom.
—You might, at some juncture, consider marrying the girl, Tom. I should be the last to raise an objection, having one less mouth to feed.
A moment’s pause before he adds:
—There is honor in marriage.
A grand flare to his nostrils when he speaks, as if he were exhaling an entire code of conduct.
But this has never been Harriot’s code. His work has always been the most jealous of mates. That a woman might come along who could embrace it and be embraced by it … this had never once crossed his mind. And now that he has found such a woman, the old assumptions can no longer hold. And so, as much as the Earl’s words rankle him, they also harry him.
There is honor in marriage.
For a week, he broods on the question. He catches himself staring at her, as if her very presence might jar him in one direction or the other. In strange moments, he actually clears his throat, like a Saint Crispin’s Day orator, ready to hold forth. Each time, she gives him the same expectant look; each time, his well runs dry.
On Sunday afternoon, she finds him in his study, half loafing through an old volume of Sallust. Sly with mischief, she curls her finger at him.
—Come.
They follow the same path they took on Midsummer’s Eve: to the house’s northwest tower, Margaret leading the way this time. No perspective trunk in her hands, but her stride is martial with purpose. She leads him up the steps; she draws the keys from her apron pocket; she shoves open the door, and then, striding onto the parapet, points westward.
There, on either side of the sinking sun, stand two shards of rainbow. Nothing but air between them.
Harriot blinks. His mouth hinges open.
Parhelion, that is what men of learning call it. But what rises up in his mind is the name he first heard as a child: sun dog. His mother used to tell him that, whenever God grew jealous of the rainbow’s beauty, he would snatch it up in its very birthing and leave behind only those two stubborn roots of light, with just the tiniest halo to connect them.
He had believed her, of course. And the shock of seeing it once more, coupled with the sensation of being here, fifty feet above the earth, with Margaret’s shoulder pressed against his … once more he is mute before the occasion.
It is up to Margaret to find the words.
—The light is red, as you see, on the sides nearest the sun. Blue on the sides opposite. In between … well, violet, to be sure, but mark how blurry and indistinct are these hues. When set alongside those of a fully formed rainbow—
He marks how the dropping sun makes a translucency of her fair skin. How it calls out that trembling blue vein on her left temple.
—I am disposed to wonder if some additional order of refraction is at work, she says. —A form of crystal, invisible to our eyes. Something there must be, do you not think? Driving the rays from their natural—
—Marry me.
He had meant it to sound self-evident—the most natural proposition in the world. But she jerks away, as if from a musket bl
ast, and all the attention she had given those trunks of light bears down on him.
—You ask me to marry you?
—I do.
—And you ask this freely? Of your own heart?
—I do.
—Knowing I am not with child? That you bear no duty of any kind towards me?
—I know all this.
—Then let me answer you with another query: Why must we marry?
He raises his hands in a gesture of supplication.
—What else shall we do?
—Carry on as before.
—I do not know that we can. I do not know that I wish it.
And by now all the translucency is gone from her skin. Her face is a brittle white mask.
—What in heaven’s name has possessed you? The two of us …
—Yes?
—Begin with this! We scarcely know each other. We hail from altogether different spheres—different worlds. Not two months ago, I was your housemaid.
—And in the days since, have we not spent virtually every waking and sleeping moment together? Is there any part of my heart, of my—are we not known to each other in all aspects?
Flushing, she wheels away. Walks to the other side of the parapet, with the sun dog at her back. Her voice comes back low and nettled.
—I can just hear the gossips now. They will say I maneuvered you into it. What a schemer they will think me—
—Margaret …
—A whore. Far worse is being said already, I’ve no doubt, under the good offices of the Gollivers.
—What care you for the world’s opinion? What care I?
They are both silent. Then, very slowly, she comes to him. She takes his long chalky fingers in her hand. She raises her eyes to his.
—I wish I had words to tell you.
—Tell what you can.
—For the first time in my life, I feel free. And that freedom is your gift to me. I beg you, do not take it away from me.
—But I never should—
—Not by design, I know that. You would marry with the very best of intentions—most men do—and the end would be the same. I would be your property.
—What do you take me for? Property …
—And that being the case, I should sooner be your servant.
She puts her hand to his cheek. Not in anger, it seems, but in pity.
—I love you, Tom. But I must not be your wife.
* * *
He spends the next day apart from her. Not from wounded feeling, as she must think, but from a surfeit of feeling. She has refused him, yes, but for the first time, his Christian name has tumbled from her lips. And in this extraordinary context.
I … love … you … Tom.
How elusive that verb had once seemed to him. And now it has been unmistakably conjugated, with Harriot as its direct object. And this somehow trumps every other consideration: the Gollivers’ ill will, the earl’s proprieties, even Harriot’s own sense of mission. There can be no mission without her inside it.
* * *
The next evening, he reports to the laboratory at the usual time. She is waiting for him. Neither says a word about what has passed. They carry on. And, indeed, it is in the act of carrying on that he resigns himself fully to Margaret’s refusal—or, more truthfully, sees the lie in it.
For it becomes clearer with each second: She has refused him nothing. She is well and truly his.
Look how instinctively she circles him in the cramped space, adjusting to his orbits. Listen to her quiet humming as she clears the worktable. Watch her slip away just before midnight to fetch him a stoup of beer.
And now watch him leave half the stoup for her. Listen to the unemphatic affection with which he says her name: Thank you, Margaret.… Yes, Margaret, that should do nicely. They have plighted no troth, but everything about them sings of a pact, quietly and gladly borne.
And later tonight, will they not adjourn to his feather mattress (his one extravagance)? Will he not explore her with a newlywed’s vigor? And what if she slips away by morning? She will be here the following afternoon. Making herself useful, as she always does. Setting out the vials and prisms. Polishing the pewter pots and bronze disks. Chiding him for his slowness in measuring. Leaning over him as he performs his calculations, or else scratching out her own sheets of figures.
And always at some point, asking him:
—Why will you never publish?
To which he can only mumble:
—Someday … I do believe … perhaps next year …
Here and here alone does he keep his own counsel. As an atomist and an alleged atheist and a friend to the most hated man in the realm, he must let the world be if he wants it to let him be.
She knows none of this, and so she sets herself with a merry heart against all those papers, piling them in high stacks, wrapping them in pretty bows of twine—suggesting with each touch of finger that here lie the seeds of some magnum opus, germinating even now in his brain’s loam.
One night, rummaging through one of his trunks, she finds the rotting remains of a secret compartment. Prying away the last fragments of damp wood, she comes up with a stack of yellow foolscap. A long chain of scraggly dust trails after it as she drags it to the light.
—What can this be, Tom?
—The annals of my failure.
She is only half listening. Already her finger is crawling toward that single word, boldly scrawled across the topmost page.
—Aurum.
She looks up at him.
—Alchemy?
He nods. And something in him grows cold at the heat in her eye. For this is when she begins to be lost to him.
LONDON SEPTEMBER 2009
36
WE DITCHED THE Lincoln Town Car as soon as we could and grabbed the first tube at the Osterley station. And as the Piccadilly Line train bore us steadily northeast and then east toward London, we sat there, the three of us, grappling with a fundamental question.
What kind of fugitives were we?
We were able to agree on this much: No police dragnets were circling us. Our two captors, with their unorthodox procedures and their limited knowledge of international law, were too obviously working for a private party.
So then we paused to consider this party. Having missed one audience with us, would he not go to a similar trouble for a second? And if he was, as Alonzo fervently believed, Bernard Styles, would his capital not give him ample resources to pursue us?
That being the case, should we act under the presumption that we were being followed at all times—travel to the opposite side of London, pretend we were doing everything but the thing we were doing? Or should we carry on as before, confident that our purposes could never be guessed?
In the end, we chose a variation of the latter path, but with hedges. Which is to say we hung our hats in Old Brentford, a West London suburb just a couple of bus stops from Syon Park. We took a pass on the Holiday Inn and the Travelodge—too public—and lugged our bags to the Dragon’s Tongue, a Victorian bed-and-breakfast about twenty years past its last renovation and two years shy of its next. The key chains were weighty oaken slabs from the age of pillions, but the TV screens were flat, the rooms came with free Wi-Fi, and the gastro-pub downstairs served mushy peas that were a bright wasabi green.
The Disraeli room went to Alonzo because he liked its crepuscular gloom. (An ancient mulberry tree kept all the sun out.) “Give me an hour,” he said, shutting the door behind him. “Or a day,” he called out a second later. Clarissa and I hauled our luggage into the adjacent Pitt the Elder chamber, optimistic but spartan, with a single cane-bottom chair and a faux-mahogany dresser and a sleigh bed with a tea-rose coverlet.
“Are we going to Syon House today?” she asked.
“More like tomorrow. Alonzo won’t want to even get dressed without a plan.”
She nodded absently. Walked to the window, pulled the shutters apart, stared out at the low grave clouds that had settled over the river.
<
br /> “You think we’ll find it?”
“Sorry…”
“Harriot’s treasure.”
“No idea.”
Two seconds later, I felt the concussion of her body next to mine, sending out tiny concentric waves across the mattress. The tickle of her hair against my cheek. A scent of bergamot.
“Are you still tired?” she asked.
“Um.” I opened my eyes. “I could not be.”
And by the time I said it, I wasn’t.
* * *
This I believe: the second-best and maybe sometimes even the best thing about sharing a bed with someone is the indolent sprawl that follows. The pond formations of her breasts. Your own spent sex, lolling against your leg with a summer ease.
“Henry.”
“Yes.”
“Tell me something about yourself.”
I angled my head toward her.
“You mean like height or weight?”
“I can feel how much you weigh. Something you wouldn’t have told me two days ago.”
I took her hand, pressed it to my forehead like a compress.
“Mm,” I said. “Drawing a blank. I think you should go first.”
So that’s when she told me about her narcoleptic father. Who, being prideful, insisted on driving during family vacations. Which turned every trip into a pilgrimage of terror, punctuated at intervals by her mother’s calm voice: “Lissie?” That was Clarissa’s cue to swat her father on the right side of his head so he wouldn’t drive them off the road.
“Why didn’t your mother drive?” I asked.
“We never even thought of that as an option. I guess mothers didn’t do that then.”
“And the whole situation didn’t strike you as odd?”
“I just figured all dads did that. You mean they didn’t?”
I kissed her on her eyebrow. Then full on the eye.
“Okay,” I said. “When I was fifteen, I wrote a poem.”
“Come on. I wrote ten thousand—”
“No, this wasn’t about carousels or unicorns, okay? It was a Petrarchan sonnet.”
“Oh.”
“Inspired by Sally Markowitz, who was a grade below me and on the drill team, with only a kind of subliterate understanding that I was alive. So I wrote this poem, and then I showed it to my mother.”
