The Movement of Stars (20 page)

Hannah sank into her chair, drained. The other note, which she’d forgotten about, poked her in the thigh. She unfolded it.
A single line unspooled across the page.

A blanket of needles rose from Hannah’s toes to her throat in a matter of seconds. She looked up and around as though someone were playing a prank. But she was alone in the garret.

It was heavy stock, not a student’s copy page. And the handwriting was neat and firm, blocked out in square, purposeful capital letters. An adult’s work, not a child’s. As she stared at it, the letters began to squirm, and she folded it up quickly, fighting the urge to shred it to pieces. Anger overtook her fear like a shark snapping up a minnow. Who would dare send such an outrageous, cowardly thing?

Hannah leapt to her feet and stormed down the stairs, forgetting about her lost comet in her haste to return to Riddell’s store. The women on the porch were still absorbed in their chatter, and none looked up, though Aliza Starbuck glanced in her direction, then whispered something to the others.

She pushed open the door so hard that the bell nearly flew off its little hook. Mrs. Riddell and the other two patrons stopped what they were doing to turn and stare. Forcing her feet forward, Hannah shuffled to the desk. Mrs. Riddell’s skin was dust yellow, like a paper ghost. Her hands were gnarled with age, but she sorted the stacks of parchment with the professional speed of a faro banker. She didn’t smile. Had she ever? Hannah couldn’t recall. She leaned closer, hoping to keep the conversation private, and cleared her throat.

“Does thee recall seeing anyone put a note in my box of late?” she asked.
“I don’t track comings and goings,” the woman answered, barely pausing as she sorted the pile of mail. Her hands flew. “Especially after hours.”
The woman raised her watery blue eyes to glance at Hannah. In the instant they made contact, Hannah saw an unmistakable glint of contempt. Then she turned away and tilted her chin at the person behind Hannah.
“Can I help you?” she asked.
Hannah stepped aside, grateful to be hidden again behind the wall of letterboxes, and, with her back to the door, reached inside her box again, feeling around with her fingertips. The key was not there. Hannah’s mouth and throat went dry, though she wasn’t sure if her fear was for herself or for Isaac. She’d told him to return the key, and she assumed he would do so. Either he’d ignored her instruction, or someone else had taken it from her box. Pulling her hand back and tucking it into her pocket, she curled it around the offensive note and went back into the street.

Not one person she encounter ed between Main and Fair had a greeting or comment, for which Hannah would normally be grateful. But now the silence seemed ominous, as if every passerby knew or imagined something about her, or about Isaac, that would cause trouble for them both. But when her thoughts tumbled too far ahead, she reined them in, forcing herself to focus on the cobblestones at her feet, the filing that lay ahead. The idea that one person on Nantucket knew about her and Isaac and saw fit to communicate it via anonymous note was bad enough. The thought that everyone knew was too much to contemplate.

In daylight, the Atheneum seemed too bright, like fresh paint on old wood. As she sorted through the pile of paper on her desk, the crawl of script across the pages swam. Even Miss Norris, who was usually in good spirits no matter what the day held, seemed agitated.

“Thee is late again, Miss Price,” she clucked as Hannah slid into her seat.
Hannah glanced at the clock. It was seven minutes past the hour.
“I’m sorry,” she said, drawing off her bonnet and smoothing her hair.
The senior librarian pursed her lips and fondled her key-ring, which was as spindly as a sea urchin.
“Also,” Miss Norris said, “I’ve found a number of volumes out of place in the last week or two.”
The woman shoved a frayed copy of Margaret Fuller’s
Woman in the Nineteenth Century
at Hannah like an accusation.
“I found this in the natural history section.”
“I see. I’ll reshelve it.”
“And there were three pattern books among the gardening volumes.”
Hannah rubbed her forehead.
“Is thee all right, Miss Price? Is anything troubling thee? It’s unlike thee to be inattentive to thy duties.”
“I’m quite fine, Miss Norris. I slept poorly, is all.”
She squinted at Hannah over the bridge of her eyeglasses.
“Thee ought to try a tonic, dear. And leave off some of thy other activities. One cannot be distracted in this job. Detail, detail.” Miss Norris’ neck pecked forward to emphasize each syllable.
“It’s everything, yes, I know. I apologize.”
Only when Miss Norris had clinked away with her keys and her pamphlets did Hannah wonder what “activities” she was referring to. Could she have written the note? It seemed unlikely. Miss Norris might be provincial, even narrow-minded, but she wasn’t the sort of person who would creep about penning anonymous threats. The more she thought on it, the more opaque the identity of the note writer became. Nantucket people— Friends especially—were known to be forthright. No one she knew would deliver his or her thoughts in such a stealthy way. It stood to reason that the culprit was an off- Islander with some grudge against Isaac or herself, or a youngster up to a prank. Her arrival at this conclusion didn’t offer any comfort, though, and she had to force herself to focus on the tasks at hand.
All the rest of the day, Hannah felt surrounded by an invisible, impenetrable fog. Patrons who normally swarmed around her desk for assistance drifted by or wandered around the shelves on their own. Even the widows, who came for company and to hear their voices bounce off another human being instead of their cats and bedposts, seemed to be avoiding her. Only the children were themselves—buoyant, noisy, ever in need of a handkerchief and a watchful eye on their reading material.
By four o’clock, when she closed the door behind her and walked toward home, Hannah was certain that fatigue was playing tricks on her mind. Ann Folger, who usually twittered on until Hannah made any excuse to get away, glanced up as she approached, then dashed across the street. John and Lilian Archer, who were strolling arm in arm down Vestal, nodded as Hannah approached, and she smiled, relieved—but then Lilian whispered something to her husband, who shook his head and seemed to pull her past. Lilian must have shaken free, for a moment later she was back.
“Hannah Price,” she breathed, bright-eyed, as if Hannah were a theater star just emerged from the stage door, and seized her hand.
“Lilian,” Hannah nodded, and squeezed back, hoping the woman would release her. “How are you?”
“Well, very well. Excellent, really. You know, the Anti- Slavery Society is planning a major event here, on the Island. The regional meeting! A major event, as I said.”
“I thought the Society had a difficult time finding a big enough meeting space,” Hannah answered, tugging to get her arm back. “Since the trouble a few years ago, I mean.”
“Well, that’s why I wanted to speak with you,” Lilian gushed, moving her hand to Hannah’s elbow. She was at least a foot shorter than Hannah, and clung to her arm like a child. “We thought perhaps you could help with the Atheneum’s trustees. To persuade them that the rightness of our cause should prevail over fear of what a few uncivilized individuals may attempt.”
Hannah was confused. She’d never attended any meetings and had avoided even those speakers who might have engaged her in another context. Their stridency offended her sense of propriety; Hannah was certain that if the minds of men were to be moved, no amount of haranguing would do the job. They had to change because their consciences moved them to it. And that was only accomplished by devotion—to whatever spiritual law one adhered to. To family. To work. Industry brought clarity.
Hannah yanked her arm free. Why on earth would Lilian mistake her for an agitator?
“I’ve no influence with the Atheneum’s trustees, I’m afraid,” she said. “And I’m certain they’d not risk the collections by hosting such an assembly. What if there were a repeat of what happened in Philadelphia?” Everyone knew about the burning of Constitution Hall during an antislavery rally inside— how close Lucretia Mott and her family had come to being burned alive.
“Oh.” Lilian dropped her hand and glanced back at John, whose arms were folded across his chest. His head was cocked and his eyebrows raised; a caption under a caricature of his stance could only read,
What did you expect?
She looked back at Hannah and smoothed her crumpled sleeve.
“Well, I hope we see you at a Society meeting soon,” she said. “The more supporters of our cause that take action, as you have, the better for all of us!” Lilian leaned in and raised herself to her tiptoes, aiming her next whisper at Hannah’s ear.
“Don’t be swayed by the chatter of idle tongues! Keep up your work!”
And then she rushed off to join John, though he didn’t offer his arm again. Hannah watched them go down the street in the diminishing light, fear ticking erratically in her stomach.

By the time she reached home, Hannah was desperate to speak with Edward. But the house was quiet. The newlyweds’ trunk loomed in the hallway like an unwanted guest, waiting for the things they’d purchased at the outfitters’ in New Bedford. She contemplated going somewhere else, to check her creeping assumptions against an objective mind. But she could think of no one except Isaac Martin. And she wasn’t ready to see him yet. She had no interest in further debating her nature and beliefs with him—especially not today—and doubting herself further could not possibly lead in the direction she wished to go. It was work that would brighten her mood and lift her spirit.

Hannah went into the kitchen, grabbed the last of the morning’s graham bread from the kitchen counter, and, in her rush to get upstairs, knocked over the cup of cold tea she’d left sitting on the table the previous afternoon. It clattered to the floor, its contents soaking her skirts and her left foot. Groaning, she dumped her food on the table, mopped up what she could, and then, holding her soggy hem in her hands and muttering to herself, ran upstairs to change her stockings.

She didn’t see Mary round the landing, her arms piled high with a tower of stacked and folded linens, until they collided on the second step.

“Oh!” Half the pile tumbled from Mary’s arms, the cloths unfurling like sails. She swayed, one arm flailing like a rudder, and Hannah reached out and grabbed it, holding on until Mary steadied. When Hannah’s pulse slowed, she released her grip, and Mary burst out laughing.

“So you don’t wish me dead after all,” she said, and sighed with mock relief.
“Oh, I’m kidding! I’m only kidding,” she added, seeing Hannah’s face, which must have reflected her horror. She patted Hannah on the arm like a grandmother, then began gathering up the cloths as if nothing had happened.
Hannah wasn’t sure what to say. She hadn’t seen Mary since the engagement dinner two weeks earlier, though Mary had left her looping, high-bridgedcursivesignature—
Mary Coffey Price
,
Mary Coffey Price, Mary Coffey Price—
lying around on so many receipts, letters, and bills of sale that Hannah could probably forge it perfectly. Every time Hannah had seen the signature, it felt like an accusation, but there hadn’t been a private moment in which she could try and express her regret for the outburst the night of the dinner. She’d never been fond of apologies: they seemed insincere, a vain attempt to earn a reprieve for one’s lack of control or poor behavior. Now that she was in the strange position of owing one, she had no idea how to begin. Feeling paralyzed, she watched Mary gather up the napkins and towels for a moment, then forced herself to stoop down and help.
“I’m sorry,” Hannah muttered. “I wasn’t looking.”
“No, I’m sorry. I was blinded by washing. It’s my fault.” Mary rose and carefully shifted the pile from one arm to the other.
Her own arms full of sweet-smelling, slightly damp cloth, Hannah stood awkwardly on the step.
“Have you . . . did you find everything you needed? In New Bedford?” she asked, grasping for some neutral topic.
Mary nodded, gathering the pieces one by one in her free arm and laying them atop her pile.
“We did, thank you. Though of course we’re limited by budget and space. We’ve got to fit a year’s worth of—well, everything— into that trunk down there.”
Both women stared down at the old sea trunk, which loomed between door and landing. Hannah wondered when Edward had taken it down from the garret, and what he’d done with the things therein. She’d only gone into the trunk one time, when she was sixteen, and some embarrassment—real or imagined—had sent her fleeing to the privacy of the garret and into her mother’s trunk.
The sweet decaying smell and the sting of vinegar had risen from it when she creaked it open, a veil of dust wafting through the glow cast by the candle. There had been letters, bundled neatly in a stack, but Hannah had allowed her hands to fall into the soft cloths beneath them, swimming down into the depths. Napkins and runners, the slippery silk of a gown, the soft wool of a shawl in a rich earth-brown hue—not knowing what she was feeling for, Hannah had worked her way down, toward the bottom, until her fingers closed around the hard edges of a book. Hannah had caught her breath and leaned back on the trunk, paging through the slender volume as if it contained revelation itself.
But the journal had been a mere chronicle of a young wife’s everyday life, in agonizing domestic detail. There were lists of items to be bartered, sold or bought; recipes for chowder and pie; tatting patterns and herbal remedies. There were almost no insights into the writer’s mind, nothing about her hopes and desires and dreams. No wisdom for a lonely daughter. Hannah had returned the book to the trunk along with the yellowing papers and swaths of linen and silk, her longing for the guidance of a ghost muted by disappointment.
What had Edward done with their mother’s things? Given them to Mary? Piled them in a corner? It shouldn’t matter. Hannah had no use for wedding things. But the idea hurt like a paper-cut, sharp and invisible.
“I’ve wanted to speak with you,” Hannah said stiffly. She folded the remaining napkin into an imperfect square, then shook it out and began again. “But I haven’t had the chance.”
“You’re like a spirit, wisping round. We’ve wondered when we’d catch you,” Mary answered, patting the pile like it was a baby.
“I regret what I said to you the night of your announcement.” The words sounded more formal than Hannah meant them to. “I was not myself.”
“I understand,” Mary said at once, placing the entire stack down on the top step and seizing Hannah’s arm. “I’ve wanted to speak with you, too. It was thoughtless of us to have sprung it all upon you that way. We shouldn’t have. We got carried away.”
Hannah felt like a marionette, her wooden limbs and pins stiff with age. She managed to nod but could not summon the warmth in her voice that was called for.
“Edward must do what is right for him. For you both.”
Mary unleashed a dramatic sigh and shook her head. Her golden curls bounced back and forth.
“Hannah, you don’t need to make a brave effort. I know it must pain you greatly.”
She dropped down onto the top step and patted the space next to her. Hannah forced herself to gather her skirts and sit down, though she longed to flee to the garret, where quiet waited.
“I, too, am sorry, for what I said to you. But it’s still true: you do judge everyone. Or you seem to. Especially me. I’ve always admired your intellect, and your work. My entire life I wished for an occupation like yours, something I could practice and improve upon, commit myself to. But my family offered me little in the way of intellectual opportunity. Of course, I did all right in school—but they disapproved of me speaking at Meeting, even when I wanted to. I was invited to Debate in other cities, at other Societies.” She glanced sideways at Hannah, as if she was afraid to seem boastful. “But my parents felt my prospects were best served by perfecting my manners and my tatting.” Mary’s disdain was clear.
A gust of surprise swept through Hannah. She’d never imagined Mary as a woman who felt hemmed in by circumstance, nor one who resented her situation.
“Edward is the first person I ever met who treated me like I was smart, who saw me clearly,” Mary continued, her voice now edged with a challenge. “This journey—it’s not only for him. It isn’t ill considered. And I don’t expect or need servants.”
“I understand,” Hannah said, and meant it. She’d seen the work of Mary’s hands. And her eloquence reminded Hannah of Edward’s comments about her Debating skill, and how Hannah had dismissed it. The notion that she’d been entirely wrong was humbling and humiliating in equal parts. Hannah sighed, giving in to the idea. It made her feel oddly free.
“At least you did perfect those things,” she said. “I never did. If I hadn’t had astronomy, I’d have—well, I don’t know what I would have done. It’s always been there.”
“It’s a calling,” Mary said, so sincerely that Hannah felt a rush of actual affection, though her enthusiasm was a bit cloying. “I’m glad for you. And I’m sorry I was unkind. I’ve no wish to wound you. We’re sisters now. I know you’ve no experience with that strange state, but I do. I’ll have to teach you.”
This sudden intimacy was so unlikely it seemed comical. Hannah snorted, trying to stifle a laugh, but that only made the compulsion to giggle even stronger.
“Is this going to require a show of sentiment or some sort of feminine ritual?” she sputtered. “I’m afraid I’ll be a total failure at either.”
“Neither nor.” Mary straightened her back and stretched her neck. “In fact, it requires nothing other than what’s already occurred.”
“What’s occurred?”
Mary began to gather up her linens again.
“Well, we’ve said cruel and unhappy things to each other, and been forced to live together without speaking, and we’ve both suffered from the idea of the other, and that we’ll have to share Edward forever because we both love him.”
“And?” Now Hannah felt threatened by tears, and she swallowed fiercely to drive them back. What was the matter with her lately? Her emotions seemed to be staging a revolt she couldn’t put down. She wished she could hide her face, but there was nowhere to go. Mary moved up a step so that they were eye to eye, not six inches from each other.
“And,” Mary said, her gaze locked on Hannah’s, “we’ll continue to do so, but eventually we’ll love each other, because we must, and because it’s the only outcome that’s reasonable, and you, Hannah Price, are the most reasonable person I’ve ever known, in spite of your horribly critical nature and your utter lack of personal style.”
It was like listening to Edward. Suddenly Hannah saw why her twin loved Mary and why she loved him back.
“And you, Mary Coffey, have turned out to be a good deal deeper than your shallow exterior promised. You’re right about one thing especially.”
“What’s that?”
“I’ve no idea how to be a woman’s sister.”
Mary sighed, and bowed her head a tiny bit so that her forehead touched Hannah’s for a split second. Before Hannah could absorb or react to the tender gesture, though, Mary had moved down a step, breaking the bond.
“It’s a shame you’ll only have a few weeks to practice,” she trilled as she passed, but her eyes were sorry, and Hannah felt a tug of sadness, too.
When she finally pushed out onto the roof, the sky was a cloudless expanse of deepest blue, moonless and pulsating with distant stars. A clear night sky onto which she could pour all of her attention and pin all of her hopes—this was her reward and her respite. Turning her attention to the telescope, she trained her eyes on the Heavens.