The Movement of Stars (18 page)

Time is short,
Isaac had said. Hannah needed to decide what lessons to retain, which to cast aside along with whatever feelings she harbored for the man. They were useless, possibly dangerous, and above all distracting. Rising from the bench, she made her way through the parlor and up the steps, feeling better the moment she entered the garret. This was where she belonged; the pure relief she felt among her books and instruments was like the cool of a pond on a scorching day.

But she’d barely gotten situated at the desk when she heard footfalls. Hannah jumped up, chin raised, clutching a sheaf of papers.
“Sorry to disturb,” Edward said, stepping into the room. He paused and looked around, his gaze hovering on the little window, then the rocking horse, and finally on Hannah herself.
“I thought so much of this room in my absence,” he said, walking to the shelf of minerals and checking its contents. He picked up half a geode the size of a sea urchin and studied its gleaming core, then put it back in a different place. “I imagined you at work, bent over your equations, ever industrious. I was certain by the time I returned you’d have established priority on a bevy of new objects in the night sky.”
Hannah swallowed.
“I’m sorry to disappoint,” she said, scratching her neck. “I can assure you it’s not for lack of trying.”
“Hannah,” her twin said, stepping closer, then stopping. “I feel that I need to say something to you. A few things, actually. But I don’t quite know what to say. I think I ought to be angry with you for how you spoke to Mary. She wouldn’t tell me what you said, but I don’t think you were flattering her needlework.”
“No,” Hannah whispered.
“Well, I don’t feel angry. If anything, I feel responsible for your horrible behavior.” Edward cracked his knuckles. The crunch of bone on bone made Hannah wince. “Which is to say, I know you better than anyone in the world. I should have confided my plans. But I knew you would try and dissuade me. I might have been swayed.”
He began to pace the room in tight circles, past the desk and the collection shelf, the trunk and the staircase, the broken furniture, and back past the door again.
Hannah shook her head.
“I doubt I’ve any power to sway you. If I had, I’d have used it four years ago and stopped you from leaving—” She paused, cutting herself off.
Leaving me,
she’d almost said. The wound felt as fresh as if she’d found his empty trunk and hasty note only that morning, not four years earlier. He was the only person she’d ever felt herself with, shown her true feelings to. The sting of his abandonment still smarted. And he was doing it again. She’d never told him how she felt. Her gut twisted with the effort of containing her grief. Would it not be best to say nothing? Was that not what they had been taught?
Edward seated himself on the old stool. He was waiting for her to speak, as he always had. She owed him truth. Her chance was now or never.
“Why did you do it?” she whispered. A tear sprung into each eye, and she allowed them to fall.
“Oh, Hannah.” Edward’s voice cracked. “I had to. If I hadn’t, my life would never have been my own. My path and yours are so different: I’ve no head for numbers, no aptitude for astronomy or maths. When I look at the Heavens, I fall asleep.”
Hannah smiled through the tears. She’d found him dreaming on the walk dozens of times.
“Father had my options laid out like a suit. It was accounting at the Bank or going to University, and you remember my marks. William Bond would have had to beg for my admittance anywhere, and I’ve no interest in sitting in a classroom anyway. I would have failed. But worse, I’d have been miserable. And an embarrassment to the Price name.” Edward’s imitation of Nathaniel fell short; Hannah could see how much their father’s disapproval pained him.
He leaned toward Hannah, reaching out with both his hands until she raised hers to clasp them. Even if he hadn’t spoken another word, she would have forgiven him. How could she not? He was her twin. Denying him happiness would only compound her misery.
“Here’s the thing,” Edward went on, keeping hold of her hands and looking her in the eye. “I know that you are the most loyal and noble of sisters that ever did walk this Island or any other. I know that you think you know what course is best for me, and that you decided in your mind that Mary is not that thing. But you don’t even know her. You’ve based all of your actions on assumptions rather than fact. If you did your work that way, every ship in the fleet would be wrecked in no time. Mary has always admired you. She told me a dozen times that she wishes she had an occupation that she could devote her mind to, something to which she could commit herself the way that you’ve committed yourself to the Heavens.”
He released Hannah’s hands and stood up, running his hands through his hair and looking around for another place to settle. He sat down on the desk. Hannah frowned, but he swung his legs like a child.
“Of course, now she can commit herself to yours truly. But, more to the point, not only were you mean to Mary, which she will of course forgive, but I’ve heard talk of behavior that makes me question whether you really are my sister or an impostor with a remarkable resemblance.”
He reached out and rapped gently upon her head with his knuckles.
“Where are you, Hannah? What are you doing roaming about the Island with your student at all hours of the night, toting your telescope like a rifle? Do you think that thus armed you could ward off idle talk?”
He folded his arms across his chest and tilted his head at her.
Hannah felt her jaw drop and snapped it shut as she fished for a response. But even if she’d known what to say, she probably couldn’t have choked out the words. The idea that her neighbors were observing her with two sets of eyes—friends and foes at once—and then whispering about her, slandering her, made her feel sick.
“Oh, don’t look so stricken!” He reached out and mussed her hair as if they were talking about a schoolyard slight. “It’s me: Edward! I don’t care a whit about your friends—and I’m assuming that you’ve taken this wayward sailor under your wing to nurture his latent navigational talents to the best of your ability.” He paused, as if considering which direction he wished to go.
“In any case, as I say, I trust that if you’ve befriended this person, whatever his hue, that you’ve good reason. But there are many hereabouts who do care. Enough that I’ve heard word of it two—no, three— times in the forty-eight hours I’ve been here.”
He shook his head and sighed.
“I’m supposed to do my brotherly duty here and warn you of this or that consequence: disownment, diminished prospects.” He pantomimed a gasp but then settled, serious again.
“All I really care about, though, is your happiness. And what makes you happy, Hannah, is work. I’m sorrier than you know that I cannot stay here and provide a base for you to keep on with your observations. I’ve thought on it for months, ever since I learned of Father’s engagement. And if you must know, Mary thought we should stay. It was my decision to apply for the expedition.”
Hannah sank into her chair, grateful for the wood at her back. She looked at her brother, with whom she’d shared every moment of her life prior to his departure. There was no more familiar set of features, no frame more comforting than his own. That he would separate from her—that they would cleave like a tree with one trunk and two divergent branches— had never seemed possible. Yet he would go. She could not follow. Nor could she stay. She could not look him in the eye.
“You must do what your happiness dictates,” she said, her voice hoarse. She cleared her throat.
“I don’t expect you to forgive me, but I hope you’ll understand. If not now, later. Staying here would be like clinging to the past instead of reaching for the future—for you as much as for myself. Even if you do move to Philadelphia, it won’t be the end of your work, though I know you think it will be. If anything, there are more opportunities there; at least it’s a city, not a tiny island mired in its own history.”
He moved toward the door.
“I’m going to meet Mary at John and Libby’s, if you want to join us,” Edward went on, pausing on the top step. She knew he wanted her to look up, to give him a sign that she had understood.
She shook her head and turned her face toward the desk.
“I’m going to work,” she lied. “But thank you.”
His feet pounded down the steps, the cadence loud and familiar. In all likelihood she’d not hear that rhythm again: he’d be gone before summer’s end. As the footfalls faded, she wondered if she’d ever think of him again without feeling a hot iron pressing on her heart. But the lonely ache that accompanied that thought was almost more than she could bear.

annah waited for Isaac on the top step of the porch, her foot taptapping in time to an invisible chorus. When she saw him approach, she jumped up and slung her bag over her shoulder, then hurried down the path.

“We’re walking.” Hannah ignored the dent of concern in his brow, and when he reached for her bag she held on to it. He was lugging a satchel of his own again, and it appeared full to bursting.

He shrugged and fell into step beside her, the early evening light muting the edges of everything in their path. She was careful to maintain a reasonable distance between them, and kept her head down and her gait quick. They walked an arm’s length apart until they were well out of Town, and both were quiet until they emerged onto the tiny bay beach north of the harbor. The crescent of sand was empty. Lamps had just flickered on in the taverns by the wharves; Hannah could hear the laughter of men and the tinkle and clank of mugs filled with spirits.

Hannah released the pack and sighed, then unknotted the string and drew out the bundled parts of the Dollond, piecing it together with hands swift as gears. Tripod, tube, eyepiece: in a matter of two minutes, the telescope was assembled on a flat boulder that might have been dropped there by a giant for their use.

“All right, then, Mr. Martin,” Hannah said, clearing all sentiment from her voice. “As of this moment, we are no longer on land.”
He raised his eyebrows and crossed his arms over his chest.
“Where are we?”
“We are at sea, of course. Since time is short, we need to accelerate your training. In this exercise, I will act as first mate.”
“You?”
“That is correct. And you are the second mate. Which is your position. You shall assist in taking a lunar observation.”
Hannah kept her eyes on his shoulder and the landscape carved behind it: the roofs and steeples of Town, the flat edge of the harbor. The stars above.
“Yes, sir,” he said, then turned toward the sea. The orb of the moon had just risen above the horizon, silvering the foam of the breakers and the damp sand under their feet, painting everything pearly grey.
Hannah nodded toward the telescope.
“Do the necessary preparations and let me know when you’re done. I’ll use the sextant to take the angular distance of the moon and— What star might we use, this time of year, Mr. Martin?”
He tilted his chin toward the sky.
“Capella. Are you—”
Hannah interrupted before he could ask anything she did not wish to answer.
Only the work,
she thought.
“Correct,” she said. “I’ll take the angle while you take the altitude with the telescope once you’ve done the preparations.”
He stared at her for an agonizing series of seconds. She could practically hear the tick of the metronome she’d used as a child to help guide her as she counted seconds for her father during transits.
She picked up Bowditch’s
Navigator
and handed it to him.
“Page 166,” she said.
He took it from her, then hunched over it, his back toward her.
“Are we in west or east longitude?” he asked, cordial as a shopkeeper. But he did not look at her again, and the current that had carried their conversation at the Atheneum was gone. He’d made himself a stranger again, and Hannah wasn’t sure why she felt sad when that was exactly what she’d intended.
She paused.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Where do you want to be?”
“Home,” he said immediately.
Hannah imagined him rowing into his own island. Its layered miracle of green upon green. His family greeting him. Perhaps a girl. She imagined a woman with skin the same hue as his, dark hair blown about by a warm wind, free from the constraints of a bonnet the size of a pumpkin. Light eyes that lit up when they saw him. A wad of envy lodged in Hannah’s throat. She saw them embrace, felt his arms encircle the other woman. His chin tilting toward her, his body leaning into hers.
“Fine,” Hannah snapped. “West, then. Pretend you are a day’s sail from your own harbor, in fair wind.” The residue of her jealousy was as grainy and unpleasant as a mouthful of sand.
Isaac nodded once, to acknowledge the instruction, then bent over the text and his copybook. Hannah couldn’t see his face, but she imagined deep lines etched into his forehead where he squinted at the page. She drew out a pocket watch and waited for him to signal that he was ready.
She meant her voice to ring out, but it emerged as a whisper.
“Time,” she said. Her stomach tightened like a fist.
He recorded his time, and, a half moment later, the altitude of the moon according to the telescope. At the same moment, Hannah took the measurement of the moon’s angle with her sextant and wrote it in her log.
She brought the log to him and handed it over, then returned to her seat and drew her book back into her lap. Isaac gave no indication of his state of mind.
Ten minutes later, after he’d pored over tables and minuscule numbers in the half-light, he brought his computations over to her. The instant she took the copybook, he sat down, unlaced his boots, rolled up his trouser legs, and stepped into the shallow water. For the next ten minutes, while she scrutinized his work, going back to the Bowditch and the telescope, repeating each of his steps, he stood in the water as if at anchor, gazing at the horizon.
“Well,” Hannah said when she’d finished going over the work, closed both books, and laid them one atop the other beside the Dollond, “you’ve performed your duties admirably.”
Isaac stayed where he was, his back to her. Hannah took a few steps closer but stopped short of the water.
“Are you not happy? It’s an advanced calculation you made.”
He folded his arms across his chest, something she noticed him do whenever he wasn’t at ease. Everything—the shape of his shoulders and back, the surface of the water, the bubbling little waves rolling onto the shore—was silvered by the nearly full moon, which was rising quickly above the horizon. To the east, though, thunderheads had already gathered. A long minute passed before he turned toward her.
“What is happening?” he asked.
“What do you mean?” Hannah studied the ripples on the surface, each a tiny mirror of the sky above.
His voice softened.
“What is upsetting you?”
She shook her head and clamped her lips together, feeling like a stubborn child. But he could not possibly understand her feelings. She wasn’t sure she understood them herself. Turning herself inside out would do nothing to advance her comfort. Already her life felt destabilized, like a boat tilting atop a wave. She felt unbalanced even thinking about what Edward had said. There was no point in discussing it with Isaac.
But he held his ground.
“Something is happening. I feel it.” He sucked in his breath through his teeth. When he spoke again there was a hard edge to his words. “I am having eyes and understanding. Do you think that I am blind? Do you think I am a child?”
Hannah raised her head and crossed her own arms. “I can’t speak to you like this.” When he didn’t come any closer, she reached down, unlaced and removed her boots, then drew off her stockings and hitched up her skirts, feeling as exposed by her bare knees and ankles as if she were naked. Then she waded out to where he stood.
“What is it you want me to say?” she asked, hating how blunt her words sounded.
“What is true. What is happening on this day. Why you are angry.”
“I’m not angry. Not with you.”
Isaac waited. His eyes narrowed as if he could see through her.
“Please. Don’t look at me that way.” What if he could see into her? What would he see? Hannah bit her lip, wishing herself invisible, and a moment later just the opposite. She wanted him to see everything, and nothing. It made no sense at all. In any case, he had no right to ask for her thoughts. They were not his to claim, like a lost valise.
“This is a small Island, Mr. Martin. People here speak of things they see, they speak to each other and then others know, too. People make assumptions. They draw false conclusions about what they have heard or seen, but know nothing of.”
She glanced around as if a group of people would materialize on the empty beach and assume that they were witnessing . . . what? A lover’s quarrel?
“You are worried that people are seeing us this night? Together?”
“More than this night.” She let go of her skirts, not caring that they soaked through instantly, and unknotted the strings of her bonnet, which were cutting into her neck.
They stood a foot apart, facing each other. He was still in the water. The moon went behind a cloud, and she could not see his features clearly.
When he spoke again, his voice was stiff, as if belonging to someone else.
“I understand,” he said. “You wish our lessons to cease.”
The wind changed. The ripples on the water reversed direction. More clouds appeared, scudding across the sky. Still they stood. Every second that ticked by felt like a door swinging shut.
“No,” she said, amazed that he didn’t know that she felt exactly the opposite: that she wished to be near him all the time; that he distracted and perplexed her mind, taunting her with feelings she could not indulge. “That is not what I wish for.”
How could he see her? She was hidden. Reaching up, she drew off her bonnet, holding it by the strings. It filled with air like a balloon. Without thinking about it, Hannah let go. It gusted away, then floated toward the beach like a poppy, airborne. The wind loosened her hair and blew it across her face. She raised her head, baring it to the elements as if she could purge her shame that way.
“What are you wishing?” Isaac asked. “What do you want?”
“I want to be near you,” Hannah said. “But I wish I didn’t.”
She half hoped he hadn’t heard. But his face told her that he had.
I’ve wounded him,
she thought. She hadn’t meant to. Her words had gone wrong. She should not have tried to reveal herself. Instead of stepping toward him, though, she turned away, sloshing back toward shore. The first raindrops fell, pelting her head and neck.
Isaac stayed where he was, even as she laced up her boots, rolled the telescope into its cloths, and shoved the books and the sextant and everything else into her satchel.
“Are you not coming back to Town?” she called, hunching her shoulders against the rain. Water streamed down her forehead and neck; her hair was soaked.
Thunder clapped and her heart jittered. Still he remained.
“Isaac!”
A flare of lightning lit the cove and the marsh and his face. He shook his head.
“You should be going,” he said.
“Are you staying here? It’s unsafe. At least come out of the water.”
He crossed the distance between them in six long strides. Then his hands were on her shoulders. The rain spattered like the flutter of bat wings. He held on tightly, grasping her, his eyes angry and tender at the same time. Was he going to hit her? Kiss her? Hannah held her breath.
But he released her and stepped back as if snapping out of a dream. She exhaled, shivering.
“It is impossible,” he said.
“What do you mean? Just come off the beach—”
“No. Not this. You. You are— I cannot understand you. What you— why you are choosing—” He put his hands over his face, pressing his palms together as though he were praying. When he lowered them, the intensity was gone, as if he, too, had decided to abandon whatever it was he’d been trying to say. He took another step away from her. Instead of being relieved, Hannah felt a crushing disappointment.
“I am having nowhere else to go,” Isaac stated, as if announcing the catch of the day or the price of milk. He nodded at his bag. “This is everything. I am sleeping where I find myself.”
He took another step away from her, as if they were doing a parlor dance.
“You’ve been sleeping outside?” Hannah asked. The idea of him without shelter against the rain and wind made her shiver more violently.
“It’s not important,” he said.
“It isn’t right.”
Isaac shrugged. The rain came harder, beginning to soak.
“My room at the boardinghouse is becoming unavailable,” he said. “She does not say why.”
Hannah stared at him, blinking away the water.
“Come with me,” she said, swinging the bag around so she could hug it to her body, protecting the telescope.
He shook his head.
“Already you are suffering,” he said. “I will not create more trouble.”
“It’s not important,” she echoed. They stared at each other. She’d failed to reveal herself in words, in deed. He could not see her, after all. She should be relieved.
Walk away,
she thought. Leave it here.
Instead, she reached for Isaac’s hand. When she made contact, clarity flooded through her. He looked as surprised as she felt, but he gave his hand to her. She weighed it in hers, imagining the delicate systems within. Blood, nerve, bone. She curled her fingers around his.
They walked this way until they reached the edge of Town. When he let go, it felt like losing a limb. The streets were empty, the paving stones slick and rippling. She couldn’t hear the bell ring on Riddell’s store when she entered, and she paid no attention to the mailbags as she reached into her letterbox for the key to the Atheneum and handed it to Isaac.
“It works on the side door as well,” she said. “Be out by dawn and replace it here in the morning.”
“If I’m caught? I’ll be arrested.” He shook his head.
“I’ll vouch for you.”
In the doorway they paused. She had to go right and he left.
“I’ll meet you at the Atheneum tomorrow, after midnight,” she said. “We can finish our lessons there.”
He nodded, saying nothing. The last thing she saw before she turned toward home was the black glint of the wet key in his hand.