The Alchemist's Daughter (16 page)

“Not this minute. For my birthday in May. And yours. People will come in droves at that time of year.”

I saw myself in my green dress floating down the old staircase. The entrance hall was lit by a hundred candles. There would be musicians in the gallery and a host of London people spilling out onto the terraces. Aislabie could perform miracles like this. He could marry the alchemist’s daughter and re-create her, just as he could buy an old ship and breathe wind into her tattered sails.

[ 5 ]

A
ISLABIE SAID THAT
books were the thing, and he was envious of the hours my father had spent reading in the library. “Time to read is a luxury I’ve never yet had,” he said. On his first morning, he insisted on taking breakfast there. I knelt at his feet and toasted bread, bemused by this sudden turnabout in the ritual of life at Selden. It didn’t seem right to mix the smell of old books with that of hot bread or to be half undressed in my father’s library with the scent of lovemaking on my skin.

There was a scurry of footsteps and Annie appeared, inarticulate with the responsibility of showing in our first guest, Reverend Shales, who had mud clinging to his boots, a black stock at his throat, and a cloak slung over his arm, which she ought to have taken. I tripped over my skirts as I stood up, my lips swollen with early morning kisses and my cheeks hot with firelight.

Bows and introductions were exchanged, coffee offered and refused, then I sat primly on a hard chair by the window with my hands folded, wishing that my hair was not loose on my shoulders. Shales took the chair on the other side of the hearth. I knew that he must have spent a great deal of time here with my father, and I was acutely aware of being caught out. This used to be a place of measured silences devoted to learning, my father’s own space in which I was always a visitor. It was as if Aislabie and I had desecrated a hallowed shrine.

Both men were looking at me. My husband was sprawled with one leg outstretched, wigless, a satin morning gown loosely tied and his chest bare. Shales, in his dark clothes, sat slightly forward with one arm hooked over the back of the chair. I clutched the sides of my robe together and pushed my tumbled hair behind my shoulders.

Aislabie took a mouthful of coffee, licked butter from his fingers, and seemed to be puzzled. “So, Shales, I believe we may have met before.”

“We did, when you first began to call at Selden.”

“Ah, yes. Indeed.” Aislabie pierced another slice of bread and held it to the fire. “And what unpleasant advice have you come to offer this time?”

“I came simply to welcome you and to ask after Mrs. Aislabie.”

“Most kind of you. Mrs. Aislabie, as you see, is flourishing.”

They studied me: Aislabie as if he remembered every detail of our lovemaking an hour previously, Shales with his usual grave attention. “I am well, thank you,” I said, glancing up and meeting his gaze for the first and last time.

Shales crossed his legs. “Your tenants are eager to welcome you,” he told Aislabie.

“I’m sure they are.”

“The late Sir John gave me authority to experiment with different types of dressing for the soil to help improve yield. I have spent years investigating the nature of plants and how they grow and flourish. I was hoping you would allow me to continue this work.”

“By all means.”

“There is some anxiety among the villagers that a new master will mean higher rents.”

“Good Lord, I’ve not thought about any of this. I’ve barely got my feet under the table here.”

“At any rate, we will be delighted to see you both in church.”

Aislabie nodded, pursed his lips, and winked at me. I felt the collusion of that wink and wasn’t surprised when Shales got up abruptly.

“Thank you for lending me the Sir Thomas Browne,” I said.

“I thought it might be a distraction.”

“I expect you’ll be wanting to take it back with you,” put in Aislabie.

“You are welcome to keep it as long as you like.”

“I doubt she’ll get much time for reading one way or another,” said Aislabie, kissing my palm and the inside of my elbow. My neck grew hot, and I looked studiously into the fire.

Shales picked up the book. “Good day then, Mrs. Aislabie. Sir.”

Aislabie had nudged back my sleeve farther and was running his lips up to my shoulder. When Shales had gone, he gave a shout of laughter, fell back in my father’s chair, pulled me onto his lap, and burrowed his hand under my petticoats.

[ 6 ]

D
AYS OF INTENSE
activity followed. Aislabie in the country was just as restless as Aislabie in town. He had brought a trunk of country gear—drabs, serges, and camlets in shades of buff and dark green—wore his wig tied in a queue at the back, and strode about in his riding boots. He couldn’t be idle, hated not being among his friends, was quickly bored, and once bored was off. He had horses and dogs to buy, a carriage to order, local grandees to meet, talked of becoming a magistrate, maybe a member of Parliament, and embarked on an extensive survey of the land. I went with him when I could, though I didn’t know how to ride and the Selden carriage was a cobwebby monstrosity abandoned in one of the stables. But we did whisk on foot through the miry high street of Selden Wick, where Aislabie scattered pennies for the children, flashed admiring glances on any woman under thirty, and paused at the forge to talk to the blacksmith and an assortment of his offspring. We were invited to warm ourselves at the raging fire, and Aislabie tried to hammer a bit of molten iron. The blacksmith was fearsome with masses of bristling beard, red skin, and huge forearms. I had never seen him as deferential as he was with Aislabie. “We’s hoping for great changes, now you’re here, sir,” he said.

Aislabie pounded the iron until the sparks flew, and we laughed at his violence. “You’ll see changes, never fear.”

“The old master tended not to notice us much,” said the blacksmith, nodding apologetically at me.

“Well, he had other things on his mind, I don’t doubt.”

“So, we’ve been looking forward to things getting better,” persisted the blacksmith, tapping shape into the horseshoe and dropping it into a pail of water. “We’ve had a hungry winter, and the estates are falling apart.”

“Don’t you worry. All will be well,” said Aislabie, clapping him on the shoulder and accepting the horseshoe as a gift on my behalf.

I had never looked on the village as a possession before, but Aislabie, with the expertise of a farmer’s son, pointed out unenclosed common land, wild hedges, derelict barns, fields full of dock, and cattle roaming freely, until I couldn’t help feeling that my father, Gill, and I had been guilty of appalling neglect. “But never mind,” said Aislabie, tossing the horseshoe into a ditch. “I have plans for Selden.”

[ 7 ]

O
NE MORNING,
a mud-spattered carriage arrived and out of it, clutching boxes and books, emerged two gentlemen, Mr. Harford, a garden designer, and Mr. Osborne, a draftsman. I was sent away from the library and sat in the kitchen with Mrs. Gill, who was polishing the cutlery. After half an hour or so, I saw their London-shod feet walk past the window.

“I presume you know what they’re up to,” said Mrs. Gill, although it must have been obvious to her that I didn’t. It was her job to brush the knives with baking soda, mine to buff them with a linen rag.

“Aislabie is full of surprises. It is one of his great gifts.”

“Ah, yes. There’s no doubt we’ll see some changes now. But then as I said to Gill,” she added, after a long pause, “where would we all have been had your Mr. Aislabie not come? Your father was bound to die one day.”

Both the fact that any conversation had taken place between husband and wife and its content were so extraordinary that I stopped work. “And what did Gill say?”

“He said there was no telling.”

“My husband is a good man,” I said. “He is full of ideas about how to make things better. He will bring new life to Selden.” Silence. One aspect of this new life had already been extinguished. My hands shook. “Do you think there will ever be another baby, Mrs. Gill?”

“There’s never any shortage of babies. But it will never be that one, Emilie. There’s never any replacing a dead baby, and you mustn’t expect it.”

“I don’t expect it,” I said hastily. “I never think about it. Aislabie has taught me to look forward, not back.”

[ 8 ]

L
ATE IN THE
afternoon, I was summoned to the terrace, where a nasty little breeze scraped bits of twig and leaf along the paving stones. The sky was overcast, and the only bright thing in sight was my husband, who wore apricot breeches and a black waistcoat. Despite the temperature, he was in his shirtsleeves. He tucked his arm round my waist and kissed me with a passion that made me blush.

The two other men averted their eyes. They were soberly dressed—one large with a jutting belly, the other too scrawny to fill his dove-gray coat.

“My dear Emilie,” said my husband, “here are Mr. Osborne and Mr. Harford. Show Mrs. Aislabie your sketches, Osborne.”

“It would be better inside under a strong light,” said Osborne, who looked chilled to the bone.

“No, here, here. She’ll have a clear idea if she can look about her and visualize how it will actually be.” My husband rolled the word
visualize
on his tongue. The wind ruffled his sleeves as he kicked at an uneven paving stone and scraped a smear of lichen with his fingernail. I knew the signs. He was bored with these two.

Mr. Osborne darted forward and spread a large sheet of parchment on the low parapet. “Mrs. Aislabie,” he said, “you are standing here.” He stabbed a manicured finger onto the design, which rolled up abruptly and fell into a bush in a herbaceous bed. Harford went puffing down to retrieve it. A muscle contracted in my husband’s arm.

The scroll was again unrolled, but this time Harford sat obligingly on one edge while Osborne held the other. I leaned forward and saw a detailed plan, drawn to scale, of the front elevation of a house or temple. The central feature was a colonnaded porch with a square wing on either side. The windows were rectangles divided by twelve panes of glass and on the roof, chimneys formed regimented lines. There was even a dome, like a modest St. Paul’s. “The dome is still under discussion,” said Osborne.

“I’ve spoken to Osborne about the Queen’s Room,” said my husband. “It could be preserved in two ways. We could dismantle it completely and reassemble it within the structure of the new house or build a shell round it. Whatever we do, we cannot, obviously, spoil the line of Osborne’s exterior.” Poor little Osborne looked anxiously into my husband’s face to see if he was being mocked.

“What about the library?” I asked.

“All this side of the house,” said my husband, sweeping his hand across the space now occupied by the laboratory, “will be part of a set of apartments ranged round a central, three-story hall with a dome and gallery. There will be a library, but much smaller than the present one.” His head was tilted back, and he was watching me.

“You mean you will pull the library and laboratory down,” I said.

“Remodel. That’s the word.”

“What about the oldest part of the house? Where’s that in these plans?”

“I’ve told you, Em, this will be the new house. All the old ramshackle bits will go. We’ll build something modern and symmetrical, not all piecemeal.”

“But this is my home,” I said.

“Our home. Yes. We’ll make it better.”

“I was born in one of these rooms. My mother died there.”

“Lord, Em, it’s not like you to be so morbid. They’re just rooms.”

Harford and Osborne were listening attentively. I couldn’t take in what was happening, so I hid my face by stooping over the plans again. Osborne had drawn two urns to mark the bottom of twin flights of steps that flew to right and left and back toward the porch. A number of triangles were thereby formed, reflecting the pediments above the porch and windows, and the regular slope of the roof on either side of the dome. In fact, the entire scheme would have made an excellent geometry lesson.

“What will you plant in the urns?” I asked, my voice unsteady with panic.

Osborne smiled politely. My husband pinched my fingers, and Harford, who had been peeking eagerly into my face, laughed indulgently. “You ladies think of every detail. Fortunately, it is my job to know what will grow in the urns, Mrs. Aislabie. They will be replanted according to the seasons. In winter, evergreens, perhaps the
Phormium tenax
, and a fall of variegated ivy.”

Aislabie’s hand slipped under my cloak, onto my waist, and down. “And now the grounds, Harford.”

Mr. Harford, I noted as he began to unroll his plans, had been careless when powdering his wig and had speckled the back of his jacket, even though he was better prepared than Mr. Osborne and produced metal weights from his pocket to keep his drawing flat.

In Mr. Harford’s garden design, the new house was represented merely as a rectangle with an adjoining set of outbuildings arranged round a central courtyard. By contrast, he had drawn the gardens in bewildering detail, and his plan was peppered with written explanations in minute script. To the south stretched a park with sloping lawns, artfully placed knots of trees, flowering shrubs, and a lake spanned at one end by an Arcadian bridge. “I don’t understand,” I said. “We have no lake.”

With a flourish, Harford produced a brass-tipped pointer. “If you will allow me, Mrs. Aislabie.” His big face came close to mine, and his instrument fell upon a tiny circle. When I bent forward, my husband’s hand darted between my legs. “Mr. Osborne’s urn, here, is where you now stand. The lake will be built here. You see the edge of the wood—those birches, the chestnut, the line of oaks. They’ll go. This temple will stand to one end, a near-exact copy of Palladio’s Villa Rotunda near Vicenza.” The Italian names were enunciated with great gusto by Mr. Harford. “If you’d allow me, I’ll take you down and show you.”

Aislabie gave my behind a tap. “I’ll see you inside, Harford. Don’t you go confusing my wife with too much detail. Broad strokes only.” He sauntered away with Osborne in his wake.