The Movement of Stars (6 page)

3:52 am. Moon transit 7:26 pm. A clear night. All exercises completed. Sweeping SSE of Pollux again sighted the nebulae around what may be a double-star, though I could not find it in the catalogue. Yesterday I did not see it. It will require further observations to determine. No wanderers sighted. My student, Isaac Martin, did have his first taste of the Heavens this night, and was suitably dazzled. He is humble, but observant. Whether he will have the diligence necessary to succeed in his work is as yet unclear.

f you could take a seat, for a moment,” Hannah said the following week, without looking up, when she heard the door to the walk shudder and squawk. The nebula she’d been observing would not resolve; it seemed to slip in and out of her field, a silken fog speckled with distant stars like a celestial egg. “I’m still trying to get a clear look at this nebula. Until it’s risen a bit higher, though, I doubt I’ll be able to
see
what I’m looking at.”

“I left the beginning of the lesson on the desk downstairs; you may start on it if you wish.”
“May I?” her father answered.
“Oh!” Hannah bobbed up like a buoy at the sound of his voice and swiveled around. “Hello. I didn’t—I mean, I wasn’t expecting thee.” Her stomach twisted with unexpected fear. She hadn’t yet mentioned Isaac to her father, but he’d barely been home in weeks.
“So I guessed. Who’s the beneficiary of thy lessons?”
“A new student. In navigation.” She instinctively omitted the details. She didn’t think the color of Isaac’s skin would bother him, but she still knew little about her student. He claimed to be temperate, but she couldn’t prove it. She didn’t know where he lived or what his history was.
Isaac could be dangerous, she supposed. But he’d shown such reverence when he looked through the telescope. He might not be religious, but he’d been moved by the beauty of their Creator’s design. That was surely a mark in favor of his character. And in any case, she’d convinced him that he could learn; now she had to keep teaching him.
Glancing back at the telescope, she rubbed her bare hands together to warm them.
“I’m glad it’s you, though. Maybe you can resolve more of this nebula than I can. If indeed it
is
a nebula. I thought I detected some motion from a few nights ago.”
He stepped closer, the familiar high ridge of his forehead emerging out of the dark, and she scrambled off the stool so he could look.
“I came up to ask about the ledgers,” he said, but eased himself onto the small seat. “Now, don’t keep thy father in suspense. What am I looking at? Are you readying a challenge to Mr. Adams’ conclusions?”
“Do you see the body just a few degrees north of Antares, near that second-magnitude star? It’s nearly in the crosshairs, and there’s a fair bit of nebulosity. I’m unsure if it’s the same body I saw a few nights ago.” She paused while he looked. “Though, on the topic of Mr. Adams, George just sent the latest summary of his findings.”
Hannah sat down on the cold walk and tucked her knees in close to her chest, wrapping her arms around them, and when her father didn’t answer, she lay down on her back and watched the stars. Giving the weight of her calves and shoulder blades and head to the hard wood planks made her feel like a child again. Her eyes watered from the cold; her hands were stiff as old leather. But she felt happy. This was what she’d wanted. To work together, as they always had. To talk about what mattered.
The only thing missing was Edward. But the last frost was coming: Hannah had smelled Spring in the air the last few mornings, even as she tapped through the ice in the basin to wash her face. The
Regiment
would be home by shearing, in June, Edward had written; that was only two months away.
Her nose was running. Twin streams of salty tears ran from her eyes toward her ears.
“I believe what thee is looking at here
is
a portion of a nebula,” her father said.
“Really?” She sat up and squinted in the direction of the telescope. “But I saw it three days ago and I’m fairly certain it’s moved.”
“Perhaps it was another region of the same nebula, obscured in part by some atmospheric event.”
“It may be. But at this time of year?”
“I’ve seen it before, I’m fairly certain. Has thee seen any condensation of light toward the center? Or any suggestion of a train?”
“I thought I did, the other night, but the moon came up and I lost it. Then it was cloudy, and then it rained. This is my first view of it since then. You’re probably right.” A pang of disappointment twisted through her.
“And in the Bedford catalogue?”
“Nothing. I should check again, though.”
“Well, I expect thee will pursue it until thee is certain,” he said, rising from the stool in one motion, his hands on his knees, then straightening his back.
“You know me well enough,” she said, unsure if he meant that she should abandon the calculation. But why would she? If improbability was the deciding factor, she’d have given up sweeping entirely. The dark idea that her father believed her incapable of finding anything notable in the night sky crept up like a spider, and she brushed it away. It could not be that; if anyone knew her ability, it was he. She’d surpassed him in maths long ago. And her eye was far better.
“I’ll keep watching it,” she said. “But I’ll check the catalogue again in case I missed something.”
Leaving the telescope on its mount, Hannah followed her father to the door and yanked it open for him.
“I’ve been corresponding with George about my meteorological survey,” she said, following him in but stopping on the top step and letting the door rest on her back. “He insisted I send him the work; he called it my magnum opus of average cloudiness.”
Her father creaked down one step at a time.
“And what did George make of it?”
“He wrote that he thought Professor Henry might make use of it for some of the meteorological work he’s doing . . . but I believe he might be overreaching. I can’t see what my little observations could do for the National Institute, can you?”
He paused on the next to last stair, then turned and looked up at her.
“I think it’s valuable work regardless of the Institute’s current needs. Their mandate is to promote science, after all. But if George thinks it worth sending, I’m sure it is so. He surely wants only the best for thee. In fact, I’d say he’s among thy greatest admirers.”
Hannah snorted, but let the door close behind her and came down two more steps, then sat on her hands to warm them. “I was considering submitting it to
Silliman’s
. Though I’m sure they’ve no use for it, either.” Hannah devoured each issue of the national science journal as it came into the Atheneum, though there was less about astronomy than she would have liked.
“Did George suggest that as well?”
“No. But they regularly publish such local findings: geographical bits and pieces, meteorological studies, and the like.” She rocked back and forth, waiting for feeling to return to her fingertips.
“Well, Hannah,” he said, then paused. “I hope thee shan’t be disappointed if they say no. I don’t know that
Silliman’s
publishes lady authors outside the botanical pages. Perhaps George or William would submit on thy behalf with a note. Ask them. It can’t hurt.”
He turned and went halfway to the desk then turned again.
“I nearly forgot. Where is the ledger for the chronometers? I need to settle the Coffey accounts before the rush.”
The mention of Mary’s name deflated Hannah’s spirits anew.
“It’s right there on the desk, under the Bowditch,” she muttered.
What would her father do if she
were
to actually discover a comet? Hannah wondered. Would he declaim it to all the land? Or insist that her findings be validated by a male eye—any male eye—in the vicinity? She imagined old man Shambaugh—the oldest whaling captain still living on the Island, who’d survived the War of Independence and the 1812 blockade and the freeze of ’ 22—bent over her telescope, double- checking her findings. She stifled a giggle at the thought.
“So it is,” her father said, sliding it out and tucking it under his arm. But he didn’t leave. Instead, he sat down in the desk chair, clutching the leather-boundvolume.
“There’s another matter I wish to discuss with thee.”
“Oh?” Hannah was still sitting on the step, and he glanced up and beckoned her down. Gathering her skirts, she stepped around the trunk and sat down on the wooden chair she’d dragged upstairs from the parlor, to replace the ridiculous setup she’d inflicted on Isaac during his last lesson.
But sitting stiffly upright in a chair facing another person at such close range was awkward, she now realized. Even so, it was comforting to sit so close to her father. He’d lit the lamp before he’d come up to the walk, she noticed; he’d had no intention of observing to begin with.
He cleared his throat.
“As you know, I’ve visited Philadelphia a number of times on Bank business this year. Well, several months ago I was introduced to someone. A lady—a widow, actually, of some means. Though she’s quite young. An accident it was—but some years ago. In any case.” He shifted and seized the ledger in both hands, as if he was about to open it and begin a spellbinding tale. Then he stared down at the cover as if stricken mute.
“Go on. A lady, you were saying.” Hannah’s mind leapt ahead. He was going to get married. A woman, a stranger, would come to live with them. The idea was so odd and unexpected that she felt as if she were floating above it, examining it like a specimen. It could be good; it might be very bad. She envisioned a Philadelphia matron in their humble kitchen. Maybe she’d hire help. Or would she expect
Hannah
to be the help?
The lamp flickered. Hannah focused on the shadows the candle cast on the piles of papers and journals, the sum total of a dozen years of shared labor. She could smell the whale oil in the lamp, an acrid, sour tang that penetrated the very walls, but was discernible only at certain moments. Like the smell of a person upon a dress she leaves behind. Ann Gardner Price had left no such trace; Hannah had no sense of what her mother had smelled like, whether she’d hummed while washing up or preferred summer savory over sweet thyme.
What Hannah did know was limited to the traces that remained, like clues to a mystery that could never be solved. Through these few items—a framed catechism her mother had stitched in a rainbow of bright silken thread, now faded but still the liveliest corner of the room she’d slept in with Nathaniel; a silhouette that Hannah used to trace with one finger, as if she could summon some essence of the woman that way; and her wedding things, a trousseau tucked away in the upstairs trunk, crocheted linens bursting with intricate flowers and edged with colorful ribbons—Hannah had deduced that her mother had liked colorful things, and she’d nestled this bit of knowledge in her heart like a tiny nut, as if it could sustain her through girlhood.
She and Edward had been three years old when their mother died, of a fever so sudden and virulent that it took less than a week to burn her life away—as if she’d been no hardier than an ant targeted by a cruel boy with a lens on a sunny day. Hannah barely recalled the sweep of many unfamiliar skirts in and out of their kitchen, the garden, the parlor, though the echoey refrain of the mourners’ comments had stayed with her all these years.
It is as the Lord wishes,
the twins had been told again and again.
Thy mother is in Heaven now
. She remembered a long- ago conversation with Edward. They’d been six, or maybe seven. Sitting in a hollowed-out log at Madaket beach, playing ship.
“But
where
is Heaven?” Hannah had asked her twin. “Do clams go there?” She went on muttering the names of the eight major winds.
Tramontana, Greco, Siroco, Ostro,
she whispered.
Maestro
was her favorite. The teaching wind. It filled the sails of their imaginary ship. Under the sand, invisible systems kept the clams alive until one dropped them in a boiling pot.
“I suppose so,” Edward answered. “I suppose their Heaven is sandy.”
“So the sparrow’s is full of thistledown?”
“And the fox’s a warm lair.”
“But then, how would they know they were dead?” Hannah asked, alarmed.
“Maybe they wouldn’t.” Edward drew a line in the sand with his toe, carving deep. “Maybe that is Heaven.”

Hannah pick ed at a splinter on the wooden seat of her chair, enjoying the sharp sting when it pierced the skin beneath her nail. The whorl of the wood knot on the desk drawer blurred, obscured by a sudden sheen of tears and a powerful tug of nostalgia for the closeness she’d felt to her father in the years that followed her mother’s death. As a child of six, she’d huddled close to him under a moth-eaten blanket atop a hillside in the northern part of the state, her eyes grainy with fatigue but wide with wonder as they waited for the moon to darken with eclipse. His fingers tight around her shoulder, the thrill of discovery binding them against the outside world as the familiar belly of the full moon went fire-red above.

Hannah willed her tears back, and her defenses held; the hollow ache of loss in her belly diminished. Her father was going on about the lady’s connections—something about the National Mint. Hannah had never considered the possibility of another wife for him, though such a move was logical, and certainly sounded advantageous.

“Hannah, thee looks as if I’ve told thee I’m deathly ill,” Nathaniel said.
She vaulted back to the present, and tried to reset her face. Of course he would find a show of emotion selfish, juvenile.
“I’m sorry. I’m only surprised. When shall she come, then?” Hannah asked. “Will you wait until Edward returns to plan the wedding? Summer’s the best time for it, I imagine. If you’re planning a wedding, I mean. Is that what you’re trying to say?” Words tumbled from her lips like grain down a chute.
“Hannah,” he said. “Listen to me.”
She stopped herself from inflicting further damage to her fingers by sitting on her hands. Had he even written to Edward? She hoped he had. Hannah felt a nibble of possibility in her chest. Maybe this was the best possible way to repair the rift in their family: a woman in the house would soften her father’s hard edges, help him accept Edward’s decision and move forward.
“She is not coming here,” Nathaniel said. “ I—
we—
will remove to Philadelphia after the wedding.”
Hannah frowned. “We? Thee and she, you mean? Does she not live there already?”
“I mean thyself, Hannah. Thee cannot remain here alone. I’ve thought long on this matter, and though I know thee would prefer to remain on the Island, I cannot in good conscience leave unless thee accompanies me. And there is much to recommend the city. Lucinda has many acquaintances there, and of course the Philadelphia Meeting is flourishing. There are any number of individuals that might be of interest to thee.”
Hannah closed her eyes, then opened them, as if to rewind the minute. But of course that was impossible. Time only moved in one direction.
Philadelphia. Accompany me. The city
. The tide of hopeful thoughts that had come in a moment earlier ran back into memory.
“Prospects, thee means,” she said, latching onto his last sentence. “Thy wish for me is to find someone in Philadelphia to marry.”
“I wish for thy happiness, Hannah, as ever I have. Thee cannot accuse me of anything else.”
“Then thee must realize that I will be perfectly happy to remain here and continue my work. I have my job at the Atheneum. And our house, and the farm. Edward will be home in two months’ time. I see no reason I should move off-Island.” She struggled to bring her voice down to level, beat back her rising panic. Her father would appreciate reason, not feeling.
His face hardened.
“Thy brother has proven that his comings and goings are based on aught but his own whim. If thee wishes to remain, I suggest thee begin to think on the prospect of doing so as half a household.”
“As a wife.” She folded her arms together over her chest, as if she could prevent herself from flying into pieces that way.
“Yes.”
“And imagining that there existed a man I wished to marry—and one who wished to marry me, which I can say with some certainty there is not—if my husband went to sea for years upon end as do half the ‘halves of households’ on this Island, how would it be any different?” She knew she’d lost the battle to keep her feelings hidden, and a desperate confusion crept in, muddling her thoughts. How had she gone from discussing a celestial object with cometary properties to what felt like begging for her life?
“Hannah,” her father said, his voice stern. “I’ve no interest in a theoretical debate about the differences between a whaling wife and an unmarried daughter. In fact, there are entirely practical options before thee which I see no good reason to deny.”
“What options are these?” She lifted her head, wondering if she’d missed something.
“Well”—Nathaniel glanced around, as if there were someone else there to overhear—“Dr. Hall, for one, has spoken to me of his great respect and affection for thee.”
“Dr. Hall?” Hannah nearly shrieked, horrified.
“It is a reasonable idea.”
She lowered her voice, but her body was quivering, like an animal in danger.
“Reasonable? To join myself with a man for whom I have no feeling but scholarly respect, so that I may continue a life I’ve happily built for myself, and in the main by myself?”
His answer didn’t matter: the truth was as clear as a harvest moon. Whatever life he desired for her was the life she was bound to. The idea that she’d determine her own future—find her comet, establish her place—had been a fantasy. It was her own fault, she realized. How foolish she had been to think she’d be permitted to triangulate merrily among the Atheneum and the Meeting House and her tiny garret observatory for as long as she wished. That the limitations and expectations that bound other women’s lives would bypass her own.
“Nothing is settled,” he said. “I await my Certificate of Removal from Meeting. It could be months, even a year. Other options may present themselves. Dr. Hall is but one, though in his defense I will say that he is as like-minded an individual as thee could desire, in addition to being both well established and as keen a supporter of thy work as myself. He’s told me on several occasions that he expects thee to surpass him, and that he welcomes that occurrence. There aren’t many men who’ll share that sentiment.”
Her father looked at her directly, and the sight of his deep-blue eyes, brows knitted with concern, overwhelmed her anger. Against her will, tears sprang up again. This time they spilled.
“Have faith, Hannah. Not one of us can intuit the future. The right path—or person—will appear, I’m certain. In the meantime . . . well, I’ll let thee keep on with thy work.”
He rose and slipped from the room, leaving Hannah sitting beside the desk at which they’d worked in tandem for more than half her life. She had never considered leaving Nantucket. Her sand and shallows, salt and sawgrass, were as much a part of her as the tribal tattoos that marked the whalers from South Pacific islands far distant. Whenever she was off-Island, Hannah felt diminished, invisible as stars veiled by the bright clamor of the city. To leave forever would mean leaving Edward. It would mean leaving the Atheneum and all its treasures, leaving their familiar house and all its memories. It would be the end of everything she’d ever known. Worst of all, it would mean the end of her observations. It was unthinkable.