Carrie Brown - The Stargazer's Sister

It is William who discovered the Georgium Sidus, William who was — who is— the king’s genius, William who has understood the stars and the planets and all their places in the universe better than anyone else. What is she? She knows that her accomplishments, though far less than William’s, amount to something, of course. But perhaps her accomplishments are only the rewards of the dullest virtues— women’s virtues — of effort, interest, and consideration. Even her comet, though it required experience to know where to look for it — as William has always said, seeing is an art — is mostly the result of her patience.

Will there be forever now only these few rooms and a narrow hall over a butcher’s shop, the smell of blood below her?

When she returns from her walk, it is nearly dawn. A mad rooster crows in a nearby garden. In bed again, she closes her eyes. Then she opens them in the darkness.

From the window, she can see the constellation of Aquarius resting like an urn tipped on the celestial equator. It pours forth its stream of stars, a beautiful deluge sprayed across the sky. In China, William once told her, the constellation was called Heu Leang, the Empty Bridge.

She thinks now about the Scotsman Ferguson, the astronomical instruments he developed for showing the motions of the planets, the places of the sun and moon. This man — no doubt a genius like William — began life as a shepherd boy, she knows, lying on his back in the meadows at night surrounded by his flock, measuring the distance between stars with a knotted string. The thought of others who, like her, have spent their nights alone watching the stars consoles her now.

It had once comforted her to be reminded that she and William, though he was in England and she in Hanover, looked up at the same moon.

The rooster crows again. Her head aches. She turns on her side. Her eyes are dry. Anger keeps her grief at bay, she thinks. She shifts again, lies on her back on the unfamiliar bed, and stares up into the dark. She has taken off her boots, but she has not undressed. By refusing to put on nightclothes, she can somehow postpone her acceptance of her new home, the dreadfulness of it. She feels certain now that William did not see this place before the arrangements were made. Maybe even Mary didn’t see it; maybe the task had been left to a servant— find somewhere for the sister —and it had suited a servant to see that rent was paid to some relation.

Surely if William had seen that there was no garden, no kitchen, just these low ceilings and crooked stairs…surely he would not have sent her here. And of course there is no place at all for her telescope.

She will not stay here.

She gets up again and wraps herself in a shawl of soft pink wool, a gift from one of the princesses several years ago, sent to her via William on one of his trips to Kew. She reaches down beside the bed and takes up her daybook. She draws up the blanket around her and props her back with a pillow.

She must find another place to live. Surely there will be a cottage nearby — she’s seen enough of them on her walks — with a good aspect for viewing the sky, somewhere close enough that she can walk to Observatory House, if she chooses. She has no money of her own, of course, beyond what is paid to her monthly by the queen, hardly enough to live on. She will have to depend — depend yet again — on William’s kindness, on Mary’s conscience and her fortune.

She will not desert William. She will continue to work for him, to help him in all his endeavors. She will not forget what she owes him.

But she is not sure she can forgive him.

She looks down at her journal. She has nothing she wishes to write about what has happened. After so many years at William’s side, after a life as interesting and varied, as adventurous and wondrous as that of any woman in England, of any woman’s in the world …now, she realizes, she has nothing at all to say. Or nothing she is willing to say.

She ties up the book tightly with a cord like something she means to weight with a brick and drown.

The rooster has stopped crowing. She blows out the candle.

She listens.

Silence.

This is the shore on which she has been washed up, she sees. It is an ill-prospected shore, dark and stony, Andromeda’s lonely rock, nothing at all like the shore at Yarmouth where the laughing, brown-eyed man once took her in his arms and carried her through the waves.

No. She will never be able to forgive William for this.

—

IT IS YEARS LATER, crossing the field between Observatory House and the cottage where she finally took up residence, when Lina slips in the snow one winter night and sprains an ankle. She has intended to join William at the telescope, but it is clear when she attempts to stand that she cannot manage the walk.

The village boy paid to escort her every night with a lantern as she goes between her cottage and Observatory House runs for William.

Back in her own cottage, where the boy’s father carries her, she confesses to Dr. Onslow, who has arrived after being alerted by one of William and Mary’s servants, that she fell during a spell of faintness. Her old headaches have been bad recently, the spots before her eyes during these episodes more numerous and prolonged. Sometimes her vision clouds completely, as if a fist were closing, the aperture of light shrinking to a pinprick.

Dr. Onslow, holding her wrist, recommends a fortnight in a darkened house, if it can be contrived.

She should rest her eyes, at least. And then, should she lose her sight altogether, he tells her — and William and Mary, who stand anxiously nearby, Mary despite the late hour — that it would be well, while she still has some vision left, if she has time to rehearse how she might navigate the world as a blind person. It would be perhaps a prudent precaution.

“I remind you,” Lina says, “that I am well accustomed to the darkness. Are you recommending now that I practice being blind ?”

“Just rest, Lina,” the doctor tells her. “I confess…I don’t know what will happen to your eyes. But heaven knows it will not harm you to rest. ”

He shakes his head. “I have treated no woman as determined as you or so little inclined for leisure.” He pats her hand. “How old are you?”

She thinks. “Fifty-seven. No, I don’t know. I don’t remember,” she says crossly. She grimaces.

“As I said,” Dr. Onslow repeats. “Rest. In the dark. Let us see if that helps with the headaches, at least. And meanwhile you can give your ankle time to heal, as well.”

“You shall want for nothing, Caroline,” Mary says. “I shall supervise it all myself. You should not be accompanying your brother in such conditions anyway. I don’t know why you let him order you about.”

“I come of my own accord and interest,” Lina says, but she knows Mary means her words kindly. As William’s wife, Mary has proven herself loving and dutiful and generous, not only to William over the years but to Lina, as well. Her attentions to Lina have been affectionate and steady. About that first set of rooms, Mary had made tearful, embarrassed apologies; the servant left in charge of that transaction had been sacked. Yet it had taken Lina time to forgive her.

The morning following her first and only night in that unhappy place, which reeked of pig’s blood and from which no stars could be seen, Lina had walked to Stanley’s farm. She would not go back to Observatory House, though William and Mary were not due home for several more days.

A gamekeeper’s cottage near Observatory House stood empty, Sarah had said, conferring with Lina and Stanley over their kitchen table. It wasn’t much, but it had once had a beautiful garden and a lovely big fireplace. She’d gone there often as a child, she said, as her mother had bought wool from the gamekeeper’s wife, who’d raised a few sheep in the meadow, as well as bees.