A Place of Secrets

by Rachel Hore

  “They are, most of them. I expect you know that being millions of light-years away, we are seeing them as they were in the past. Some may not exist anymore and what we’re seeing are the ghosts of them.”

  “It’s too big a concept for us to grasp really, isn’t it?” she replied, her voice husky in the cold air.

  She saw, as though properly, for the first time, the misty ribbon of Earth’s own galaxy, the Milky Way, made up, she knew, of hundreds of billions of stars, all eons of light-years away. Giant words like eternity and infinity that people bandied around every day had suddenly taken physical shape before her.

  She glanced down for reassurance at the humble reality of her old jeans and sneakers and became intensely aware of this other man, a near stranger in a scruffy anorak, who sat quietly, hands on knees, on the brick beside her. Studying those hands, considering their strength and their gentleness, brought her back into the world she knew, the tiny little world in which she could believe she was important.

  “Are you all right?” he asked gently. “You haven’t said anything for ages.”

  “Yes,” she replied. “I think I’m all right.”

  “Come on.” Euan pushed himself to his feet in one light movement, then helped her up, and moved to the telescope he’d set up on a tripod to one side of the platform.

  “Is it safe?” Jude asked, eyeing the parapet.

  “I think so, but I wouldn’t lean on the side just in case,” he said, glancing absently, already absorbed by whatever he was looking at through the lens.

  She shuffled toward him for safety, but merely catching a swooping view down toward the trees was alarming enough. She stopped and had to cast from her mind a sudden fearful image of Summer up here. But he hadn’t brought her up, had he? She remembered what Chantal said about the accident that had happened once, forty years ago. It would be easy to fall, especially if you were drunk or high on drugs. The mere thought made her dizzy and she sat down on the floor again.

  Euan said firmly, “You need to come and look at this.” He helped her up again and held her by the shoulders as she found the eyepiece.

  “I can’t see anything. I’m too frightened. No, wait, hang on.”

  What swam into focus looked like a topaz set in a heavenly wreath of mist and light.

  “Oh my God. What is it?” she breathed.

  “Arcturus,” he replied. “The guardian of the bear. It’s one of the nearest of the bright stars in the sky. Try looking at it with the naked eye. There.” Jude squinted to where he was pointing. “You see a sort of kite shape? Well Arcturus is the bottom of that constellation, which is called Boötes, the Herdsman.”

  “What’s the sort of semicircle to the left?” She was all right if she didn’t look down, and he was holding her securely. She felt his breath in her hair.

  “Northeast, you mean? Corona Borealis. The Greeks claimed it as the crown of Ariadne—the daughter of the King of Crete.”

  “He of the Minotaur?”

  “Yes. Now the biggest star in the Corona is a reverse nova. Every hundred years or so it’ll fade suddenly, then recover. It’s because of dark material erupting in it. I don’t know very much about astrophysics so don’t test me on exactly what dark material is.”

  “Isn’t it important for your book? I’m enjoying your new one, by the way.”

  “Thank you. Only to some extent. I am interested, but as I told you my focus is our cultural response to the stars over the centuries: why we stargaze and why it’s been so important to us to understand the cosmos. It’s probably the oldest branch of scientific inquiry, you know, not that our distant ancestors would have understood our concept of science.”

  “It puts us in our place, looking at the stars,” Jude whispered, but whereas just now she’d experienced dizziness and terror, this had settled to a kind of pleasant awe. With him holding her she didn’t feel so nervous now; she was enjoying starting to make sense of the mass of dancing light above her.

  They continued to look at the stars for a further half hour or so and then, seeing she was shivering, Euan said he had a flask of coffee downstairs. “Will you be all right on your own for a second?” he asked.

  “Yes, I’ve found my stargazing legs,” she said, and it was true. She was quite happy here now, high above the troubled trees. And though it must be past one, she didn’t feel the least bit tired.

  She stood staring around the great bowl of stars overhead, observing the moon’s progress across the sky and thinking how quiet it was. She tried to imagine Anthony Wickham sitting up here alone in the frozen night, calculating the movements of the celestial bodies. What was he hoping to discover? Cecelia hadn’t found out much about him, or whether his findings had contributed to the great body of knowledge being built about the stars. What motivated him? She couldn’t say. Though now she was beginning to understand the allure of the night skies.

  Euan reappeared. “This’ll warm the cockles of your heart,” he said, pouring her a brimming cup. He’d put sugar in the coffee and she welcomed the sweetness. She took several sips, then passed it to him, and he drank, too.

  “Do you come up most nights?” she asked.

  “Only sometimes, if there’s a clear sky. I found this place soon after I moved here, when I was casting around for an idea for a new book. I climbed up here on a night like this and was immediately struck by inspiration. I knew a fair amount about the stars already, and the whole idea for the book came into my mind practically ready made. It’s quite rare for that to happen. And of course my publisher loved it. It’s a magical book to research and write.”

  “It’s lovely when your interests are also your job. It’s a bit like that for me, too. Or it would be if there weren’t all the politics and the pressure to make money.”

  She saw his teeth flash white. “Well, we all have that, don’t we? Food, mortgages…”

  “Tell me how you got into nature study and writing. I’ve got this vision of you as a snotty-nosed boy trapping insects in matchboxes and hatching lizards on the dressing table.”

  He laughed. “It was a bit like that. I had what you might call a free-range childhood, out and about on my bike every day, and a very inspiring teacher who ran the natural history club. I read zoology at uni and became a lab rat for a bit—you know, research—but it didn’t suit. So I moved back here and took a job in conservation.” He paused. “It went on from there really.”

  His words drifted off and she sensed he’d reached difficult territory. Telling her about writing his first book might mean talking about his marriage. He wasn’t a man who was easy to know. He was friendly and open, and she felt so relaxed and natural with him, but there was still a part of himself he didn’t easily give up. She respected that. Everyone had their own timing. She certainly did.

  And so did nights of stargazing. A cloud was drifting over the moon. She drank the last of the coffee and suddenly felt very weary. “I think I ought to get back.”

  “Yes, of course,” he said. “Well, I hope you’ve enjoyed yourself.”

  “Oh yes,” Jude said fervently, watching as he dismantled the telescope and packed it into a bag.

  “Good,” he said, and again that smile flashed in the darkness. He helped her onto the ladder, then came down himself, closing the trapdoor.

  “You must come again,” he said, his voice echoing, as they went down the stairs. “You’re a good stargazing companion.”

  “Thank you. I don’t mind taking notes for you, if it helps.” Now why had she thought to offer that? It felt resonant of Anthony and Esther.

  “How very kind. Are you staying long in Norfolk?”

  “Apart from needing to pop up to London for a day or two sometime—oh, another couple of weeks.”

  Such a short time really, she thought as she drove back toward the Hall. She must get on with more of that transcript tomorrow. She needed to start drafting her article for Bridget. And do something about that necklace in her handbag.

  CHAPTER 19
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br />   The next morning after breakfast Cecelia telephoned. “I’ve been reading those diaries,” she said. “Jude, they are a really fascinating record of astronomical observation at that time. Wickham’s most important contribution is these new telescopes he made. They meant he was able to look at the stars with significant magnification. I can also tell you that he was a very careful, objective observer. You can really get the impression of the development of scientific method.”

  “That sounds encouraging,” Jude said doubtfully.

  “But as to actual discoveries, this ‘story’ you’re looking for to help the sale, I don’t know. He certainly identified a number of so-called double stars, but that’s not going to sound very exciting, is it? I suppose what is interesting is what happens when the daughter, Esther, takes over from him. Her notes, though careful, are much more lyrical and passionate. She talks about the sky being ‘an ocean of stars’—that’s a lovely image, isn’t it? And she says here, wait a moment, that she feels ‘like a traveler among them.’ You really get a sense of her. But there is something else. Listen to this. She’s talking about some object she’s seen in the sky near the constellation of Gemini. ‘It is there again tonight. At magnification 460 I can see it has no tail so I question my Father’s observance. It is no comet. I feel earnestly that it is something new.’”

  “I read about that. What was it?”

  “I have my suspicions. If I’m right, well, it would be amazing. But I need to read to the end and check some other things before I say anything, and I might be a few more days doing that. Danny is over from Boston for a week and we promised ourselves a little trip to Paris.”

  Jude was disappointed, but dredged up enough warmth to say, “You lucky things,” and to mean it. Paris made her think of Caspar, but she felt no twinge of regret. It was curious that those few months with him already seemed an eon away.

  She thanked Cecelia and said good-bye.

  It was with renewed enthusiasm that she returned to Esther’s memoir. She was quickly entranced by the young girl’s voice.

  It was nearing Christmastide Anno Domini 1772. One frosty afternoon I was amusing myself with the doll’s house in my room when, glancing from the window at the sound of hooves, I beheld a carriage and pair swaying along the drive, the horses’ breath billowing up in the icy air. The vehicle pulled up before the house and a youth sprang down to still the horses. The coachman handed from the carriage first a tall angular lady in a feathery hat then a skinny boy perhaps a year or two older than my ten summers. The lady stood glaring up at the house, as though inspecting it for deficiencies. I, it seemed, was one. For a moment her expression had softened, as though something in the mild lines of sandstone had appeased her, then her basilisk’s eye caught my curious one through the glass and her whole body stiffened. I flinched as though struck and stepped aside. When I looked again she’d gathered her skirts and was marching towards the steps, the boy tagging after.

  Suddenly, below, I heard the entire household roused into uproar. Mrs Godstone screeched for Susan; Mr Corbett, the butler, bade a footman: ‘Fetch in the luggage sharp now, will you, man?’ I crept out of the nursery, sly as a cockroach, and no doubt as welcome as one, to my hiding place near the top of the stairs. Downstairs, doors flew open and slammed shut, hobnails cracked on marble and a snarling female voice resounded through the marble atrium: ‘Take me at once to my brother. And make up the fire in my usual room, will you?’ My father’s sister had arrived.

  She had visited before, of course, but rarely for more than a day or two. On this occasion, Alicia Pilkington, second wife to Adolphus Pilkington esquire, gentleman farmer of Lincolnshire, brought their meek eleven-year-old son, Augustus, whom she referred to publickly as my father’s heir. They stayed for the longest week I ever remember. And during that time they brought the household of Starbrough Hall to its rheumaticky knees.

  Her bachelor brother, Alicia insisted with undisguised contempt, knew nothing of running a great house, and so it was her sisterly duty, she announced to Mrs Godstone, to investigate the systems, to audit the household accounts and to measure the thickness of the dust under the bed in her room, the room which she’d inhabited as a child and which must thus always be kept in readiness. With a precision the king’s generals would admire in their quartermasters, she inspected the linen cupboards, the larder, the attics, the boot room, the cellars, the privies—but not Mr Corbett’s pantry, the door of which he defended like a wild boar at bay. She passed judgement on every least aspect of the housekeeping from preserves to chamber pots—and it was not long before that basilisk’s eye searched out me.

  ‘Why does this child infest the family nursery?’ she asked Susan while I loitered unhappily by. ‘Can she not sleep with you and Betsy like any other serving brat?’

  ‘The master does not think of her as a servant, my lady,’ Susan burst out, bobbing hastily to lend deference to the remark. ‘More as a … a connection.’

  ‘A connection? In what sense a connection? They say she’s some pauper’s bastard. Why he doesn’t give her up to the care of the parish I can never fathom.’ This fresh view of my origins, and the accompanying look she gave me, which implied he should best have kicked me into a ditch to die, caused the blood to slow in my veins. ‘Don’t gawp at me so, you saucy imp,’ she shrieked. ‘I tell you, Susan, you’ll do well to take her to your own bed. And teach her some manners, for the sake of God’s angels.’

  And so I slept a night on a thin pallet between Susan and Betsy in their room under the eaves, and I say slept, but shivered would be the better word, though Susan did her best to warm me with the thin blanket she could spare. ‘Is it true?’ I asked her. ‘Was I really a pauper’s bastard?’ But she denied it heartily, telling me as before that Anthony Wickham must be my father. He had brought me home one summer’s night and declared I be treated as his own. I saw through that right away; it might mean I was in truth his daughter, or it might not. ‘I knew you to be well born,’ she added, tucking the blanket round me, ‘for though you were dirty and clothed in rags, your skin was as delicate as a petal and those rags were of silk.’ I pondered this mystery as I tried to warm myself enough to fall asleep. Perhaps I was a princess after all, but I still longed for Anthony to be my father. In the morning, Susan pressed her lips together like two halves of a muffin and went to apprise my father of how his sister had treated me.

  The next night I was returned to the nursery, but Father would have done well to have awaited his sister’s departure, for it was then she first saw me as an obstacle to her ambitions, and though she would not dare touch me, she struck Susan across the face for flaunting her authority. And that proved her worst mistake with me for I could not forgive any who hurt my Susan. Thereafter Alicia Pilkington and I were bitterest enemies. That week I played tricks on her so subtle, so clever, she could not prove her misfortune was ever anything but accident, though she must have had her suspicions.

  I laid green sticks in her fire so it smoked and made her clothes reek; I fed seeds of an herb Sam once told me caused dreadful itching through a hole in her mattress so she complained her skin was covered in bug bites. Most unkind of all, may God forgive me, was my treatment of poor Augustus.

  Thin, pale Gussie added to the troubles of the household by falling into a fever on the third day of their visit. The weather was so bitter that Jack Frost nightly decorated the inside of my window and in the mornings I must break the ice in my ewer to wash, but in Augustus’s room the fire was stoked up all night until the sweat ran down his face and soaked his bedding. Two nights crept by thus and the crisis passed, and since his mother returned to bullying the staff, it was I whom she deputed to amuse the invalid and this I did by telling him stories. Ghoulish tales about the burial ground on the hill, the horrific spectres that walked the woods and even, I assured him, ventured into the park. ‘On any moonlit night I dare not look from my window,’ I’d whisper, rolling my eyes, ‘for fear of sights of such great terror I’d turn to ston
e.’ Augustus would stare at me, his mouth a dark O in a face already white from illness. He refused to sleep alone and, to my chagrin, I was ordered to share his room. At every strange sound—the tremor of the glass in the window frame, or the creak of a floorboard, he’d sit up and clutch the sheets with his long girlish fingers. And in time I softened. My intentions towards him had been villainous—to get back at his mother—but gradually we became friends, and he confided to me his mother’s expectations, that he inherit the Hall from his Uncle Anthony, since his father, Adolphus, had an elder son who was to inherit the Lincolnshire lands. I thought nothing of this at the time. He is a harmless sort of boy, my adoptive cousin, more like to his studious uncle than to his termagant mother or the portly country squire papa whom I met on a later occasion.

  Apart from his intervention on my behalf, my father fastened his door to the turmoil of that week, keeping to his room or his workshop, his meals delivered by Betsy on a tray. It was too cold even for him to venture out to the folly, though the stars I saw from my window on those ice-bound nights must have tempted him; huge, they seemed, and glowing with their true colours, Arcturus creamy and Betelgeuse pinky red. For yes, I had been schooling myself about the night sky from a book I had found in the withdrawing room.

  Two days after Aunt Pilkington’s departure, Susan burst into my room, bright-eyed and breathless, gasping that I should make uncommon haste, for my father required my presence that very moment. She smoothed my hair and straightened my collar, then led me downstairs and out to his workshop near the stables, where she pushed me through the doorway and left me.

  Father was there, sitting at a table busily polishing a large silver disk like to a salver. This, he told me without looking at me, was a mirror for a new spyglass and must be burnished this way with oxide of tin for many hours until it proved worthy to reflect the very images of the celestial gods. He had summoned me to assist in these endeavours, and I gladly set to, fetching materials as he ordered, placing by him a dish of tea Betsy had lately brought, all the while stuttering answers to his manyfold questions about what I learned at the school and studied in books. Then he instructed that I read a passage to him from a volume lying open near his elbow.