The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane

by Katherine Howe

  “Blessed be,” she said, wryly, to Arlo, who had appeared at her feet.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Marblehead, Massachusetts

  Mid-July

  1991

  DESPITE HER BEST EFFORTS TO FEEL AT EASE IN GRANNA’S HOUSE, Connie often discovered herself to be confined—hiding, almost—in the kitchen. Her sharply circumscribed orbit could be blamed on the antique icebox, with its tempting, liftable lid, the only source of cool air in the dense heat of midsummer. She kept her notes restricted to Granna’s desk in the sitting room, camped in the four-poster bed overhead late at night, and passed through the rest of the house quickly. In the kitchen, however, she lingered, running the water in the sink, chopping vegetables at the counter. In the kitchen she felt more on top of things; its small space presented a finite, achievable task in the rehabilitation of Granna’s unsellable house, and its dated appliances at least gestured to a twentieth-century world outside, the world where Connie still felt herself to live. This morning she found herself leaning, one narrow arm propping the lid open, with her chin extended over the drifting mist rising out of the icebox’s depths, letting the cool air creep up under the damp base of her hair, into the crevices behind her ears.

  She felt calm this morning, focused. Her plans for the day were in place, and Connie liked nothing better than having her plans set firmly in place. Her tenuous sense of safety was bolstered when she stood in the little kitchen, with its cheap screen door into the backyard and its shelves of dead glass jars. She had developed the habit of each morning opening a few of the jars and scrubbing out their contents, black and desiccated, onto a compost heap in the far corner of the rear garden. She left the empty jars, rinsed and drying, lids open, in rows by the back stoop. She liked to peer at the rows from behind the screen door, admitting that the ever-growing compost pile and the ever-diminishing kitchen shelves formed her own private calendar system. The lowest kitchen shelf now stood empty, and Connie had even wiped away the last of the dust, washing it from a rag down the drain of the sink and feeling as she did so the release of a small chore finished.

  Connie closed the icebox with some regret and turned back to the shelves, choosing the jars for that morning’s purge. Three medium-size ones stood at eye level, their labels crisp with age, and Connie pulled them down one by one, slotting them into the curve of her arm around her belly. As she grasped the last one, her knuckles bumped against an unseen object, which she grabbed and pulled to the edge of the shelf. It was an undistinguished metal box, small, gray, with a lunch box clasp but no lock. Connie left it there while she carried the three jars to the compost heap, returning some moments later, wiping her wet hands on the seat of her cutoffs.

  She took the little box between her hands and pried open the clasp. Inside Connie found a cache of note cards, the first one of which read Key Lime Pie in a cramped script that Connie remembered, just barely, as having belonged to her grandmother. She laughed quietly to herself. Lard, she read, extending her tongue in a bleah of disgust though no one was in the kitchen to witness it. She laid the box aside and shuffled through the note cards, sifting through Granna’s penned recipes for almost defiantly 1950s cuisine: tomato aspic, pork tenderloin, bean and frankfurter casserole. Connie enjoyed a bloom of mischievous pleasure as she contemplated saving the cards for the now vegetarian Grace, mailing her a concrete reminder of her New England childhood. Checking her watch, Connie slid the recipe cards into the rear pocket of her cutoffs, grabbed her shoulder bag, and banged out the door on her way to the Salem Athenaeum.

  AN AFTERNOON’S TELEPHONING TO THE VARIOUS RIVAL NORTH SHORE historical societies told Connie that there had, in fact, been something called the Social Library in Salem. Established at the end of the eighteenth century as an offshoot of a gentleman’s social club, it had been maintained for some years by exorbitant membership fees and the donations of books acquired by wealthy Salem merchants’ travels overseas. In 1810, however, the Social Library merged with a private membership library for science and technology, the Philosophical Library, to form the Salem Athenaeum. Connie was surprised, and deliciously pleased, to discover that the Salem Athenaeum had flourished through the nineteenth century, and while Salem’s shipbuilding fortunes collapsed and its importance as a port was first eclipsed, then utterly surpassed, by Boston, Baltimore, and the Carolinas, the Athenaeum had trundled along blissfully unaware of its growing irrelevance to American letters. As the Volvo rolled to a labored stop across the street from the “new” Athenaeum building, erected in 1907, Connie felt—not for the first time—a private affection for the commitment to the status quo that under-girds the fierce Yankee impulse toward thrift.

  Connie approached the desk on the left side of the sunny, well-appointed reading room, devoid of readers save for an elderly gentleman on the rear porch sipping lemonade, one long arm propped on a cane. At the desk a young matron was knotting thread on the underside of her needlepoint.

  “Excuse me,” Connie whispered, and the young woman looked up at her with a smile, laid aside her sewing, and stood to clasp Connie’s hand.

  “You must be Miss Goodwin!” said the librarian, and Connie was surprised that she spoke at a regular volume. She even had a cup of tea sitting on her desk; the crisp smell of lemon pierced through the familiar wood-and-books aroma of the library. “We spoke on the phone this morning! I am Laura Plummer.”

  “Hello,” Connie said, smiling, enjoying the woman’s warmth. Of course, in private libraries, one deals with little children and visiting oldsters more than neurotic graduate students. It must be easier to stay pleasant.

  “You had inquired about seeing some of our original collection, is that right?” the woman said, ushering Connie toward the doorway into the stacks.

  “Yes.” Connie nodded. “I have been trying to track down this particular almanac—at least I’m pretty sure it’s an almanac—that I have reason to believe was donated to the Social Library.”

  “We do have a number of almanacs,” she said, snapping on overhead lights as she went. Connie felt the same sort of pleasure and safety in narrow book stacks that she had lately felt in Granna’s kitchen. She shivered with excitement, reflecting that any one of these anonymous brown spines might be Deliverance’s physick book. She might even be within an hour of finding it.

  “Here we are,” said Miss Plummer. She could not have been much older than Connie herself, but Connie had trouble conceiving of such a tidy woman, in her Peter Pan collar and pleated skirt, as a “Laura.” She gestured to a short wall of books along the very rear of the stacks. “The Social Library only existed for fifteen or twenty years before the Athenaeum was formed. And the holdings, though impressive enough at the time, were modest by today’s standards. Mostly printed sermons, a handful of novels, a few almanacs and navigational guides and suchlike. I’ll be back at the front desk if you need any help.” She withdrew with a smile, and Connie dropped her shoulder bag at her feet, weaving her fingers together and stretching them out before her with a preparatory crack.

  Some hours passed, with Connie checking in the card catalogue first for Prudence Bartlett, Mercy Lamson, and Deliverance Dane as book donors, or perhaps authors, with no result. Next came several fruitless minutes thumbing through the cards for “almanac,” though all examples seemed to belong to well-known mainstream publishing series, providing weather and planting guidelines for farmers. The library held one copy of Benjamin Franklin’s satirical Poor Richard’s Almanack, but none of the books were either particularly old or self-written. Finally, awash in frustration, she resorted to reading the spines and, eventually, the frontispieces of all the books in the almanac section of the collection, with no success.

  Connie emerged despondent from within the archive, the weight of her shoulder bag with its bulging notebooks and pens digging into her shoulder more acutely than usual. She hooked her thumb under its strap and approached Miss Plummer’s desk.

  “I’m sorry to interrupt you,” she said, and Mis
s Plummer looked up, smiling. The smile made the weight of Connie’s book bag marginally less pressing, and she felt her shoulders unknot by a fraction.

  “Yes?” asked the librarian. “Did you find it?”

  Connie sighed. “I’m afraid not. Was there ever a point where some of the collection was de-accessioned, do you think? I know for sure that the book was donated here. And I can’t imagine that anyone would have stolen it or anything….”

  “We de-accession things all the time,” the librarian confirmed. “Usually bad novels and things after we have had them for a few years. There’s very limited space in the stacks, as you can see. Let’s check the files.” She stood, turning to a large filing cabinet behind her desk. “I’m sure we’ll find it,” she assured Connie as she pulled open the cabinet drawer.

  I hope so, Connie silently wished, wondering what she would tell Chilton if this lead failed.

  “Here we go,” said the librarian, paging through a discolored file. “Our first major de-accession occurred in 1877. It says here that books with no record of ever having been checked out were auctioned by Sackett”—she looked up and added, “That’s like the Boston equivalent of Christie’s or Sotheby’s”—before continuing, “to raise money for collection maintenance and the building of the new library building.” She closed the folder again and looked at Connie. “I’m afraid that there is no record of the titles of the books that were sold, but I feel certain that Sackett would still have the records on file. I’m sure you know how Boston institutions feel about record keeping.”

  Connie thought back to her experience at the Essex County probate department and chuckled through a gentle groan. “Thank you for your help,” she said to the librarian, who was sliding the file folder back into place in the drawer behind her desk.

  As Connie turned to leave, the young librarian, seating herself at her desk and reaching again for her needlepoint, brightly repeated, “I’m sure that you will find it.” And for some reason, Connie believed her.

  AS SHE MOVED THROUGH THE SUMMER AFTERNOON TOWARD THE SALEM Common, book bag knocking against her flank, Connie’s thoughts roamed back to her conversation with Janine. As an undergraduate, Connie had read Manning Chilton’s seminal book about the professionalization of medicine in eighteenth-century America, and had known that she wanted to study under him for her doctorate. Professor Chilton viewed science as an intellectual historian might—treating science not as a set of facts that are true no matter what the time period, but as a way of looking at the world that depended on historical context. And yet for all its breathless sweep, his work never overlooked the individuals who peopled his narratives. Doctors with their bleeding lancets, irritated midwives, mail-order laudanum salesmen, all stirred to life in Chilton’s practiced words. The people in his history books felt as real to Connie as the students who passed her in the hallways of Saltonstall Court, or the panhandlers dotting the streets around her college. Chilton seemed to possess a special gift for peering from the present into the past, like the old glass-bottomed buckets that fishermen would plant in the water to view the secret depths below the boat.

  Alchemy would naturally appeal to Chilton, with its search for transcendence through carefully honed technique. The alchemist sought to use the tools of chemistry and science to transcend reality—a spiritual quest, according to Janine, but with literal application. Alchemy sought to create value and beauty out of nothing. The dumb natural object hid fathomless realms of possibility, or so they had thought, which could be unlocked, given sufficient practice, patience, and study. For the adept with the correct formula, the philosopher’s stone was within reach, with all that it promised: wealth, long life. Enlightenment.

  Wealth. Connie frowned. Janine said that Chilton’s paper argued that carbon could be the base substance for making the philosopher’s stone, transformed in some heretofore unimagined way: it was a potentially precious thing but currently without value. Unknown, and yet known to all—the building block of life.

  Connie stopped walking, lost in thought. Perhaps Chilton was not just risking his professional reputation, as Janine thought. Chilton was growing older, nearing the end of his career. He chaired the Harvard history department. He already had as much prestige as he could possibly need. Perhaps he was after something beyond prestige.

  As she paused, Connie gazed through the latticed shadows lining the street that led to the church where, she knew, Sam was at that moment brushing thin gilding over the dome at the base of the steeple. Her head had been so sunk into her research that she was having trouble keeping track of her days. They had taken to speaking on the phone, five minutes at a time, late at night, but had not managed to see each other since the night the circle appeared on her door. Now she pictured him, one leg twined around the metal scaffold, ropes and harness fastened in place, droplets of liquid gold speckling the backs of his hands, dotting his forehead from the upward spatter of the stiff-haired paintbrush. Suddenly she saw how keenly she had missed him over the past several days, and she felt a pressing urge to detour to the church.

  Connie lingered at the corner of the street for a full minute, shifting her weight from one sandal to the other. Finally she brokered an arrangement with herself in which Sam could work on in peace, provided that she call him that evening to make concrete plans. Satisfied, she continued her progress toward the Common, mind once again absorbed in thoughts of Chilton.

  When Janine had said that Chilton claimed, in an academic conference no less, that alchemical work should be taken literally, surely he wasn’t going around claiming that lead could be turned into gold, like Rumpelstiltskin at his spinning wheel, surrounded by magical ingots. Connie smiled at the image. No. He must mean something else. But what? Substance, or idea? When Manning Chilton said “the philosopher’s stone,” what did he mean?

  The Salem Common stretched out before her, bald in spots, cracked and shimmering with the heat. Connie spotted a tree with a suitably dense pool of shade under its branches and stooped to pluck a dandelion. She brushed the soft white puff against her upper lip, closed her eyes, and thought I wish that Sackett auction house could tell me exactly where Deliverance’s book has gone as she blew out a stream of hot breath. When she opened her eyes, the puff looked patchy, bedraggled, the flower stem still gripping its seed pods, giving away nothing. Connie tossed the dented stem aside and, reaching the tree, dropped her bag and then herself to the ground.

  As she sat she felt a tight, uncomfortable lump occupying her rear cutoff pocket, and reached behind her to see what was pressing through the denim. She pulled out the offending object and discovered the packet of note cards found in Granna’s kitchen that morning. Connie smiled, anticipating Grace’s reaction when she opened an envelope in Santa Fe to find it full of Sophia’s voice. She flipped the top card to the back of the pile, revealing another recipe.

  Chicken Fricassee, it said. Pluck and scald fresh chicken thoroughly and boil with a carrot and celery stick. Season with salt and pepper. Serve with cream and a little stock. Allow six hours. Good with white rice. Reading the card, Connie could see Granna in the kitchen of the Milk Street house, steel gray hair pulled back, left hand curled in, resting the outer wrist on her thickened waist, dipping a long wooden spoon into a bubbling pot. The aroma of cooking chicken drifted through the imagined memory, and in her mind Connie saw Granna turn to look over her shoulder toward where Connie was standing, smiling, saying Just another hour or so. Connie flipped the card to the back of the pile to reveal a new one.

  Boiled Lobster, said the new card. Wash live lobsters gently, then throw into pot of salted, boiling water with a tight lid. Add marjoram for the pain. Boil until bright red, quite awhile depending on how big. Serve with lemon wedge and melted butter. You’ll need a nutcracker. Connie pried each sandal off with her toes and rolled onto her stomach in the grass. As she held the note card, she imagined an older, bearded man with a bleached captain’s hat and burned, creased eyes raising his hand to knock at the screen door
of the kitchen, and Granna setting aside her broom in the corner where it still stood, holding the screen door open with one hip to accept a rough wooden box from the man, saying, I always feel so sorry for them, and the man saying, I ha’ liddle extrer in the catch this week, Sophier.

  “Granna,” whispered Connie, wondering what other image of her barely remembered grandmother might emerge from the scant writing in her hands. Works especially well for tomats, said the next note card, and Connie heard Granna’s voice in her ears saying “tomats” instead of “tomatoes,” but the writing underneath that heading was difficult to make out, so Connie leaned in, bringing the card close to her nose, squinting in the shade to make out the hasty forms of the letters. She formed each letter in her mouth, gripping the card between her hands on the grassy ground, letting the words assemble one syllable at a time.

  “Pater in…caelo,” she began, wondering how Granna could have a recipe written in Latin. “Te oro et obsec…obsecro in ben…benignitate tua.” She narrowed her eyes, gripping the card tighter because her palms started to feel prickly and hot, as if brushed against a stinging nettle.

  “Ut sinas hanc herbam, vel lignum.” The heat and stinging grew more acute, edging nearer to pain, and she blinked her eyes rapidly as the note card seemed illuminated by a round bluish glow. She grimaced against the improbable pain, finishing, “Vel plantam crescere et vigere catena temporis non vinc tam.”

  The blue light condensed into a pulsing round orb between her hands, aiming crackling electric veins at a dry young dandelion seed on the ground. Connie’s lips parted, her eyes wide in astonishment as the seed started to throb and heave and bubble, shooting a slender, fragile stalk up, up, up until its very tip exploded into a yellow flower. Before she could fully grasp what she was seeing, the yellow flower burst into a white seed puff.