The Movement of Stars (15 page)

The Coffey dining table stretched from one end of the room to the other, half the length of a schooner. On the walls of the room, portraits of previous generations of Coffeys glared down upon the diners as if in horror that one of their own had secretly married a Price of little means. Hannah felt stiff as an overstarched tea towel in a brown, high- necked First Day dress she’d been wearing since high school. It was meant for cooler days, but she couldn’t get the blue one clean in time. Once, she and Edward would have scoffed at the idea of supping at the Coffey table in their best clothes. Now he sat across from her, barely visible through the twisted metalwork of a brass candelabra that dominated the centerpiece.

Even surrounded by Mary’s imposing family—her parents, John and Charlotte; her sister, Eleanor; and her two brothers, Elias and Elijah, and their wives—not to mention two Nantucket selectmen, Dr. Hall, and his own disapproving father, Edward looked serene. Hannah wondered if her father had even informed Edward about his own plans to marry and remove.

She’d yet to have a moment alone with her brother, and his proximity was excruciating. All she wanted to do was steal him away, to walk and talk. The simplest things. But they were trapped in this grand room, where everything from the windows to the table to the gilded edges of the china was burnished to a mirror-like sheen. Everywhere she looked, Hannah saw herself, wavy, distorted. Her place setting seemed crowded with cutlery. There were three spoons, two forks, and what looked like a silver toothpick with two prongs at the end.

It was a ridiculous assortment for one person, but she was glad to have something to do with her hands while the conversation flowed around her. As the soup was served and removed, and plates of carved roast meat and potatoes were passed, Hannah felt the chatter more than heard it, until Elias caught her attention.

“I don’t see the allure of Philadelphia, myself,” he said to the table at large. “Outside of the Mint, of course.” Hannah glanced at her father, seated beside her to the left, but he didn’t seem to notice.

“What about Constitution Hall?” Mary offered from her place next to Edward. “That was a grand building in its time.”
“ ’Twas, until a mob burned it down,” Elijah said.
“There’s the Independence Bell,” Elias conceded. “I suppose that’s something.”
“A seventy-year-old bell?” his brother sniffed. “I’ll take Boston any day.”
“If the mob had read the Bell carefully they’d have thought twice about routing Mr. Garrison’s antislavery forces. Does thee know why, Edward?” Dr. Hall asked from Hannah’s right elbow. She’d been surprised to see him, then grateful that she’d at least have someone to speak to; but he’d been unusually reserved, and spoken more to her father and the other selectmen than to Hannah.
“Hannah?” Edward asked. She shook her head.
“Leviticus 25:10.” Dr. Hall put one finger to his chin, waiting to see if anyone knew the passage.
“ ‘Proclaim Liberty throughout the land unto all the inhabitants thereof,’ ” Nathaniel intoned.
“Those who support slavery aren’t civilized enough to care,” said Elias’ wife, Sally. “They’d happily melt the Bell down for reuse as shackles.” She lifted her chin but her eyes sparkled. Her pretty defiance was a kind of flirtatious parlor game, Hannah thought. Sally, along with every other woman in the room, seemed crisp in her muted silk dress, a silvery grey color reminiscent of a cloud. While all the women were technically in keeping with Discipline as far as their attire— no one wore bright colors or plunging necklines, and there wasn’t a ribbon or ruche in sight—Hannah still felt thick and common as a dandelion in a field of poppies. Her hand fluttered to her hair, which she’d haphazardly pinned into a knot that threatened to undo itself with every move she made, and she wondered how these women kept their hair so neatly ordered and plaited into intricate coils.
Someone helped them, she realized. An instant later, a memory blazed through her: her mother’s hands, hovering at her neck. The gentle, lulling tug of braids woven in, a splash of bright blue ribbon wound round the ends and tucked away, like a hidden gem only revealed at bedtime.
The soup was cleared by black women in matching long skirts and snowy white aprons. The sensation of her mother’s hands receded. Hannah found her gaze drawn to their hair beneath their snug caps, wondering if it was similar to Isaac’s. A pang of what felt like hunger ran through her at the thought of him; she hadn’t seen him since their strange shared vision in the garret nearly a month earlier. Embarrassed by her ignorance, she resumed playing with her silverware, though she supposed she ought to eat something.
“I heard the bell ring once, when old Tippecanoe passed on,” Elias said.
“Did you?” Edward asked. “What did it sound like?”
“Quite loud,” Elias answered. “Rather like the sound of thousands of free Africans overrunning the country. Liberty Bell indeed.”
“Elias! Really.” Sally clicked her tongue. Hannah winced at the crude comment.
“What? I’m no friend of the slaveowner, but sudden, wholesale manumission? They must be mad. It’ll be a disaster.”
“More of a disaster than the continued subjugation of an entire race of men, women, and children? I cannot see how,” Mary snapped, and Hannah looked up, surprised at her fervor.
“That’s because you’ve never looked farther than your own Island shores, where all the bunnies run free and happily together,” Elias answered. Mary and Edward exchanged glances, and Hannah saw her brother shake his head and whisper something to his new wife. Mary smiled.
Hannah felt overheated, nauseated by the bloody platter and the overcooked green beans. Hoping for distraction, she turned toward Dr. Hall.
“Have you had a look at the latest volume of
Silliman’s Journal
?” she asked.
He nodded.
“It lacks the depth of a scholarly endeavor. I’d rather hoped for more substance from our national science journal.”
“I thought much the same,” Hannah said. “There’s nothing on astronomy at all except a short description of the observatory at Cambridge. And nothing on Charles Babbage’s latest analytical engine design. Though I suppose that’s technically an English innovation.”
Mary had bent her head low and was laughing at something Edward was saying. Hannah wondered what he was making fun of. He’d made no effort to include her in their conversation—though with a piece of brass the size of a small tree between them, it would have been difficult. Still, she felt snubbed, and the sting of rejection made her even more unhappy to be there. She tried to focus on what Dr. Hall was saying; something about Horace Mann. She’d read that article, hadn’t she? Hannah rummaged in her brain for its thesis, and was relieved when she retrieved it.
“I found the article about Mr. Mann’s school heartening,” she said. “Not the part about the training methods for women teachers; thee did a fine job of instructing me on that front without any formal ‘method.’ But as far as it advanced the idea of equal education for all people.”
Dr. Hall bowed his head slightly, absorbing the compliment, then put a forkful of peas in his mouth, chewed, and swallowed. Hannah pushed her food around on her plate.
“I’m told thee has a student of late.”
Hannah controlled her features, though she could feel the blood rush to her cheeks.
“It is true. In navigation,” she said mildly, wondering who had told him about Isaac. What they had told him. “Only the rudiments, of course: he’ll be halfway around the Cape before we could even scratch the deeper surface. Yet he advances.”
She paused, hoping the conversation would end there. When he didn’t answer, she glanced at him, and was reminded again how much he’d aged since he’d been her teacher. Perhaps she’d misread his question.
“Does thee miss thy students?” she asked.
“Some more than others,” he answered, turning his head to look at her. His eyes seemed paler today, the icy blue of a glacier. At such close range, the effect was bracing: instead of the old mix of excitement and fear she’d felt as a schoolgirl when he paid attention to her, she now felt acutely conscious of his physical proximity. She could see the iron-grey stubble on his cheek, the whorl of thinning hair on the back of his head. Her cheeks warmed as his gaze lingered, and her father’s words in the garret back in April returned with burning clarity:
Dr. Hall has spoken of his great affection for you.
Hannah looked back down at her plate, mortified by the idea that her teacher could be attracted to her; it was perverse in the extreme. When John Coffey cleared his throat, Dr. Hall turned toward him, and the clink and buzz around the table ceased. Hannah exhaled.
“We wish to acknowledge the presence of the Price family at our table,” he said. There was a tiny crumb marring the sheen of his deep- blue jacket, and Hannah kept her eye on it. His voice betrayed no emotion. He might have been speaking to an assembly of workers at one of his storehouses, or to the men’s Business Meeting about a bylaw.
“And our esteemed friends as well. We are grateful for thy company, though as you know this event was rather unexpected.”
A ripple of laughter went round the table, though not everyone was smiling. Hannah caught Edward’s eye for a moment, and she felt more than saw his discomfort, though she was sure no one else did. She was seized by the urge to protect him from this theater. But how? Should she rise from her chair and inform everyone that Mary was not deserving of a hair upon her brother’s head, much less his heart? That her devious capture of his body and spirit was not the Coffeys’ to despair but the Prices’?
Edward looked back at Mary, and curled his hand over hers upon the tablecloth. Hannah felt her heart shrinking like a sponge being wrung out.
“Edward and Mary have joined themselves in the contract of marriage, and we gather together to acknowledge the promises they spake to one another, and in hopes that their union may prosper,” John finished.
The assembled bowed their heads briefly to acknowledge his words. Hannah thought she saw Elias roll his eyes, but she averted her own before he saw her looking.
“What are your plans, then?” Sally called from the other end of the table. “Shall you set up housekeeping at the Prices’?” Someone at the table tittered; Hannah couldn’t tell who.
Edward and Mary exchanged a look, and Edward nodded. Hannah studied his face through the branches of the candelabra. She closed one eye, then another; in the wavy candlelight she saw something new in his face. His light was still there, but there was gravity as well. He was no longer a boy, she realized.
“Some time ago, Edward wrote a letter to Captain Zachary Thomson, who is leading a cartographic expedition to Jerusalem, to express his wish—our wishes—to join their party,” Mary said.
Hannah wasn’t sure she’d heard correctly. A collective gasp went around the table.
“Really?” Elias said. “
The
Captain Thomson?”
Edward nodded.
“Jerusalem?” Charlotte Coffey repeated, her shock visible to all. “And,” Mary continued, “he’s had his answer. We’ve been accepted.” She beamed at her husband. Edward looked across the table at Hannah.
“We wished to speak to everyone separately earlier today,” he said. “But with all the hubbub by the tents, our nearest and dearest did vanish like runaway sheep.”
Hannah would not look at him. Jerusalem was a half a world away. To her right, Dr. Hall said something about the Dead Sea, the science of salt. How it buoyed everything, yet could sustain no life. The Jordan River was mentioned; someone’s father had been to Nazareth, seen the lake upon which Jesus allegedly walked.
Dr. Hall opined that the story had its basis in the aforementioned sea; Charlotte Coffey said she believed her Savior had walked upon freshwater.
Hannah felt frozen in place. But her gaze was drawn to Mary, who seemed as happy and hopeful as any new bride. Hannah imagined the journey before her, the places she would see. The moon above Jerusalem lighting the white stones. Stars like runes, ancient and meaningful, spreading overhead.
“I’m feeling unwell,” Hannah whispered to Dr. Hall, and pushed her chair back from the table. She focused on the pale pink roses on the carpet beneath her feet. Its thick pile caught the legs of the chair, making it difficult to stand.
She heard Edward say her name. But Hannah continued through the grand foyer with its polished floors, and out the door with its ostentatious brass knocker in the shape of a right whale, and then she was in the street, striding toward the home she was about to lose, under the only night sky she would ever observe. It was difficult to think clearly, now that her only hope for a future of her own choosing had announced his plans to depart for the other side of the world. It was her worst nightmare, what everyone had warned her of. Edward was leaving, and there was nothing Hannah could do to stop it.
And then Mary was running to catch up, calling her name with her sweet, trilling voice, but Hannah didn’t break her stride until Mary seized her elbow and yanked her to a halt.
“Please! Let me speak.”
They faced each other like adversaries about to duel.
“You must know that Edward wanted to share our plans with you personally, but you disappeared amid the festival,” Mary said, trying to catch her breath. She let go of Hannah’s elbow and brushed it with her hand to smooth the sleeve. Hannah pulled her arm away.
“Your plans,” she echoed.
“Yes.”
Mary straightened her shoulders and stared back. The sight of her calm brow and clear eyes was infuriating.
“Unbelievable.”
“Why is that, Hannah?” A hint of something hard crept into Mary’s voice.
“Where do I even begin? First, there is the matter of this being Edward’s home, and where his family is. This is where he belongs. And second, there is the matter of your own—fitness.” Hannah spat the word out as if it tasted bad.
“Fitness for what?”
Mary’s voice carried genuine confusion, but Hannah paused for only a fraction of a second. Then she ceased to think at all.
“For anything, as far as I can tell. For industry, to begin with. Do you plan to twitter with the birds and the fish all day long? Will you don your finest silks, your French lace, on the crossing? Will you assist with navigation? Collect specimens? Take a lunar? Read a chart? What
are
you fit for, indeed?”
Mary recoiled as if Hannah had slapped her.
“How dare you?” she whispered. “You know nothing of me. And apparently nothing of your own brother. I’ve shown you only interest and kindness, and in return you judge me. Not only me: you judge everyone! From the safety of your rooftop, or the blockade of your desk. Deeming us worthy, or unworthy, in the main, without knowing a thing about our nature. It’s remarkable, really. For all your industry, you see so very little. I pity you,” she finished, a sob catching in her throat. “Once Edward is gone, you’ll have no one at all.”
Mary turned her back and fled in the direction of her house, leaving Hannah standing in the middle of the dark street, adrift as a ship with no mast. Her rage receded, but she still felt like the victim of a cruel scheme to strip from her everything that mattered.
The house on India Street would only remind her of all she had lost. She couldn’t go back to dinner. Rooted in place, Hannah thought she could feel the Earth spinning on its axis, while she remained stuck in place, pinned to its surface by the invisible, unseen force of gravity itself.