Carrie Brown - The Stargazer's Sister

“We?” she says.

“Midday dinner for the workmen, when they are here,” William says. “Morning tea. Afternoon tea. Very simple. Bread and cheese. Cake.”

Lina feels as though small hands are pressing fingertips against her throat.

She does not want to remind him about the singing lessons he has said would begin immediately. She has been worrying about this, imagining herself standing before an audience at the Octagon Chapel, her face uncovered. They had passed the chapel last night on their way to the house. William had pointed out the public baths as well. Such pursuits are not to his taste, he’d said. “Very strange, very mystical, I think, people walking slowly through the warm water and the mist in their fine clothing as if they are in a dream.

“Some say it is therapeutic,” he had continued, but it was clear he had neither time nor inclination for such pursuits.

But again now it is as if he hears her thoughts without her speaking them.

“Three singing lessons a day,” he says, “and you will practice the harpsichord two hours as well. We will make much music, I assure you. That is how I earn my income, after all. No one pays an astronomer except the king.” He smiles at her. “One day I shall have some of the king’s money.”

She cannot think about the king any more than she can think about the vegetable garden. She can’t imagine how she is to accomplish everything he has set out for her. How will she practice her singing and play the harpsichord and go to market and cook and clean and—

William takes her hand.

“There is everything to teach you, Lina,” he says.

He speaks to her in German now.

“I will give you as much to learn as you can bear,” he says. “I need someone who understands what I am trying to do. I need someone who will not judge me or doubt me or chastise me or trouble me about unnecessary things. I need someone who will only help me. And your mind is quick. I think you will be an even greater help to me than I had foreseen.”

It is vain to be pleased by his compliments, she knows, but she is flattered.

And that he speaks to her in German…she is touched by this. It is a concession to her worry.

“It is what I want, also,” she says carefully in English. She wants him to know she will make an effort. She closes her other hand over his.

Her frustration from a moment before, her anger at his apparent failure to understand her trepidation, her fear that she cannot do everything he seems to be prescribing for her, abates but only slightly. The little hands release their grip on her neck, but she can still feel them there.

Mrs. Bulwer returns, fusses before the fire, and then brings to the table plates of toasted bread and sausages, boiled brown eggs in a bowl.

She sets down a tray with a teapot and two mismatched cups.

Mrs. Bulwer pats Lina’s shoulder.

“ She’s a tiny thing,” she says to William, as if Lina is deaf. “You didn’t say. Pity, about the pox scars. I suppose she’s lucky to have survived, though.”

Lina looks stoically at William. She has understood Mrs. Bulwer perfectly this time.

William avoids Lina’s eye.

“I did not tell you, Mrs. Bulwer,” he says conspiratorially. “My sister is indeed tiny, but she is a very powerful German witch. You’ll have to watch out for her. She’s very clever.”

Mrs. Bulwer’s face bears no expression for a moment, and then she laughs.

“Mr. Herschel, ” she says and turns back to the fire, but she pats Lina’s shoulder again.

Lina does not look at William. She picks up an egg. It’s warm in her palm, familiar.

“Mach dir nichts draus,” William says. “Never mind.”

—

WILLIAM WAKES HER when he returns in the mornings, smelling of the river. Drops of water from his hair fall onto her as he bends over her, shaking her under her quilts in bed.

“Sleepyhead,” he says, though it is barely light outside. “You waste the good day.”

She dresses and makes tea, and then they sit together in the kitchen, pulling the gateleg table near the fire for warmth, for the autumn weather is already cool. William gives her an hour of instruction every morning. He covers diverse subjects: music, arithmetic, astronomy, English, the practice of keeping the household accounts. He aims to make her a useful companion, she understands and, as with all things in William’s universe, in short order.

She is tired during these dawn sessions. William berates her for yawning. But one day after a few weeks of this routine she finds she has awakened before William has come to fetch her. She is downstairs in the kitchen before he returns from his swim, and she has already made bread dough, two bowls of it rising near the fire.

He is clearly pleased to find her there, the kettle steaming.

It is early October, and there has been a first frost.

“Isn’t it too cold?” she asks him as he sits down by the fire, rubbing his head dry with a shirt.

“When there’s ice on the river,” he says. “That’s when I stop. The exercise sharpens my thinking.”

It is difficult not to look at him, the shape of his strong shoulders and arms, the muscles moving as he dries his hair, his skin flushed. She wonders again about a woman, but there has been no sign of one so far.

He mentions no friend except Henry Spencer, whom she has yet to meet.

She will delight in Henry Spencer, he assures her.

She finds herself thinking often of him, wondering about this friend of her brother’s.

—

SOON THE DAYS of rising early, of asking her mind to move quickly, create the habit of it. She wakes with her head already occupied with questions for William, as if they have been turning themselves over in her mind while she has been sleeping, questions about the nebulae that so interest him, about the moon, about parallax and its importance in astronomy. He teaches her the quantitative formulas and algorithms and geometrical diagrams used to compute the distances between celestial objects or to establish their positions in the sky.

Little lessons for Lina, William calls these hours of tutoring.

At the midday meal, which she prepares for William and however many workmen are about, there is often further instruction.

One day, while they are gathered in the dining room, he makes her guess the angle of the slice of apple pie she serves him.

She is flustered to have attention called to her in this way. She looks at the slice and makes a guess.

“Wrong,” he says.

He reaches over and takes away her plate with its serving of pie. He takes an enormous bite. There is silence around the table. He looks over her. “What?” he says. “You must answer correctly, or you will have no pie.”

The men look away, smiling. William takes another bite, and then another. He presses the tines of his fork to the plate to collect the crumbs.

She sits, her face flaming.

“I cannot believe it,” she says. “You are eating my pie. Where is my pie?”

He pats his mouth with a napkin.

“Delicious,” he says. “Unfortunate that you missed it.”

She stands up abruptly and begins to gather the dishes. She is mortified, furious with William for embarrassing her. She feels every day all too aware of her ignorance in relation to her brother’s knowledge.

The men hand their plates to her as she comes round the table, thanking her politely as if to make up for William’s treatment of her.

“You can have mine,” Stanley says. He lifts his plate with his uneaten slice toward her.

“Do not coddle her,” William calls down the table. “You will see. She’s cleverer than all of you put together.”

At the end of the meal, when the men have gone back to work, the table is covered with William’s papers, and there is ink on the cloth from his scribbling and his notations on musical scores. He leaves the table finally, a book in hand, a napkin falling from his lap to the floor.