The Blind Astronomer's Daughter Page 5
“To speak them out loud will invite bad luck,” she says.
The framework of the observatory rises slowly from the roofline, iron ribs outlining the swell of the dome. Owen O’Siodha calls upon a carpenter from Thomastown who comes with his boy and they fit together the wooden planks of the circular chamber one by one. The work is difficult and dangerous—lifting each part to the roof by rope and pulley proves an arduous task in itself—and the men tie themselves to each other in case one of them should step too close to the edge. Complications arise as the pale dome grows, and they struggle with the alignment of the wheels and the mechanisms for opening the shutters. The construction takes longer than Arthur expected, but he does not worry over the delays, not here, far from any city, where time seems to move at a pace of its own making. The blacksmith assures him it will turn out right in the end.
On the wooden deck affixed to the roof where the observatory will sit, Arthur chalks the outline of the six-tailed comet and stands upon it triumphant in the knowledge that wherever the comet has traveled, its distance is now so great that its influence will cause no further harm. Martha and Peg say that the new children will brighten the dreary rooms of New Park. And on a radiant September afternoon Mr. McPherson tells Arthur that Owen O’Siodha’s family has also recently increased by two, that the blacksmith has taken into his care a young nephew and an infant girl, a foundling he could not turn away. It seems fitting to Arthur that the estate should suddenly have new lives upon it, though he suspects that the blacksmith will again be at his door with some new proposal for altering the arrangements of his lease.
Long before Theodosia’s confinement is due to begin, she cries out in the night, soaks the sheets with sweat and utters curses and apologies. Arthur wakes Seamus and urges him to bring the doctor at once, but the gardener tells him that the doctor has gone to Dublin and it will take time to get word to him. Martha sends for a woman in Inistioge who knows about such things, and when the old woman arrives she pulls at her graying curls to hear that the labor has arrived so soon. She sends Arthur away and he passes the night pacing frantic in the garden, hands at his ears to muffle the familiar roar, his eyes fixed on the sky to see if the comet has returned after all. And when morning arrives at last and Theodosia is finished with the ordeal, her breath is scarcely deeper than that of the infants, twin girls, who seem hardly to breathe at all. But Arthur is encouraged by the flush of their cheeks and their placid expressions, for he refuses to believe that the universe might be so unkind as to take away all that he once had, and then take it again.
The girls wrestle the heaviness of the world for four days, swaddled against the waiting darkness, and then they surrender quietly, one following the other by minutes. Theodosia holds them close and will not allow them to be taken away. She begs Arthur to wake them with stories of what there is to be seen in the heavens, and Arthur tries to convince himself that Theodosia is correct, that the girls are only sleeping, and then he knows how it must feel to slip into madness. The day turns slowly, and on the next, though the infants have grown cold in their swaddling, still Theodosia will not release them. She sings to them softly and makes Arthur promise to keep the door locked until the twins awaken. Pale and feverish, her dark hair spread over the damp pillow and shot through with streaks of silver that seem to have multiplied in the night, she says she will follow her children wherever they go, for she cannot remain in the world without them. She tells Arthur he must let no one come near. In the hall, Martha and Peg reassure him that there is nothing to be done but to wait, that they have known mothers and infants who have survived the darkest beginnings, and Arthur realizes then that no one else knows that the girls have passed on. He climbs the steps newly bolted to the roof, encloses himself in the empty observatory, and roars at the sky in grief. He cannot bear to think that the infants—so briefly in this world—might yet drag their weakened mother with them. He paces beneath the observatory’s open dome, shouts regrets into the wind, confesses that in the denial of impending loss he failed to bless his daughters with the names that he and Theodosia had chosen—Caroline and Jane—and it is too late to do so now. He can do nothing for his daughters, but it seems he might still have time to save Theodosia if he can tether her to this world, if he can give her a reason to stay with him. The pealing of iron on steel draws him out of his thoughts, tolls him back to the world, and he stumbles down the roof slope, continues straight on through the house and onto the road to the town, toward the black smoke and the clang of the blacksmith’s hammer, and before he can put his thoughts in order, he is pounding two-fisted upon the wooden door of Owen O’Siodha’s forge.
Chapter 5
THE BLACKSMITH’S NEW AGREEMENT
Late in the evening, Owen O’Siodha gathers all of his boys near the hearth, and they sit on the dirt floor as he stands wide-legged before them and says that their lives will be much improved.
“The forge is no place for a foundling,” he tells them. “It’s only what’s best for all.”
He says it unsmiling, the crease in his brow a dry riverbed of worry. Moira looks away. She picks at the loose threads of the wool stocking in her lap, makes worse the hole she means to mend. In the hearth, the last licks of fire trip over the crumbling brick of peat, and the boys swing their heads through the flitting shadows, nodding in slow agreement. Owen explains the new agreement, what he has given over, and what they will have in return.
“Your Mr. Ainsworth tried to get better terms for himself. Said he would make us tenants in perpetuity, today, and tomorrow, and every day after—enfeoffment he called it—but I told him it was no more than what we are now.” Owen thumbs his breastbone. “I said we were all truly sorry for his grief, but I told him straight that in exchange for what we were giving, what we wanted was to purchase the land with no restraints.”
Finn sees how the other boys grasp the advantage of the first part. He understands their relief in sending the girl away. Already this evening there would be an extra crumble of bread, an extra ladle of milk doled among them, and Owen reminded Moira that she herself had often marveled aloud how Siobhan seemed to eat almost half as much as any of her boys. But of the agreement’s second part the two older boys are doubtful. Patrick draws a square in the dirt, halves it again and again until there is nothing left but the tracks of his finger. Andrew stares at the muttering glow on the peat, does not hide the rolling of his eyes. Owen says that it is a blessing, that providence brought her to them and has taken her away to something better. But Finn can still feel Siobhan’s presence in the room, cannot imagine that he will ever escape her pull, and Andrew—who has uttered no predictions since Owen pushed Father Donaghy from their door—leans toward Finn and whispers, “This is how it falls apart.”
“As soon as we agreed on the terms, Mr. Ainsworth said it must be done at once.” Owen fixes his gaze on Moira. “He said that Mrs. Ainsworth meant to follow her babes to the grave, unless one remained to hold her in this world.” Owen nods, approving his own decision, encouraging the boys to do the same.
Moira picks at the stitching in the mended sock, and when the hole reappears she hisses.
“We can say nothing of this to anyone,” Owen warns. “That is the agreement, but in return we will have the new lease, and sure it will demand a little more of us every month, but once we are done, the land will be ours, and who does not dream of owning the soil he has watered with his sweat?” Owen throws his arms wide, but the words do not fall with the same certainty as before. “Surely you can all see the advantage in it for us, and for herself too?” Andrew buries his chin in his chest, and the other boys cast birdlike glances around the small cottage. They look at the walls of mud and horsehair buckled from the burden of holding themselves upright. They look at the ill-fitting door hinged with rope, doing little to keep out the drafts that stir devils of ash across the floor, at the ceiling low-slung with thatch, and all of it dressed in the funereal soot of the forge.
“This will be yours,” Owen
says, and something stirs in the thatch overhead, a mouse burrowing in the straw.
“So that is it, then,” Moira says, balling the stocking in her lap, “and we will say no more about it.”
Finn wonders if, in the years to come, Siobhan will remember anything of what has come before. He has seen the children of wealthy men pass through town in carriages and he has noted the brightness of their clothes and the fullness of their cheeks and how they stared past him in the road, as though he were not there at all. He imagines a long table set with platters of beef and loaves of bread and bowls deep as pails brimful with stews and Siobhan seated at the head of it, and he wonders, too, if Mr. Ainsworth might find some remedy for her injured hand and he tells himself that she will be better off for it. Owen reminds them that they must put her from their thoughts. She will be called by another name now, one of the Ainsworths’ choosing. To complete the fiction, Finn helps Owen dig a hole beneath the oak where Siobhan once watched the broad leaves flutter, and Owen lowers an empty box into it and mounds it over and marks the grave with a plain stone. He goes to the Green Merman and sits with a pint in his hands and tells the publican, Duggan Clare, that it was a sudden fever that took Siobhan from them, that there was nothing to be done and they are all needful of solace. And no one sees anything extraordinary in it, another sad happening to be gossiped over bottles and drams and forgotten.
Mr. McPherson comes soon after, his jaw working side to side, lips puckered as if he were chewing a bitter root. The middleman smells of burnt leaves and his teeth are gray in the corner of his mouth usually twisted around the stem of his pipe. The boys stand at the forge and stare as Mr. McPherson sets a ledger before Owen and Moira and explains that it shows the great number of months required to purchase the land. “And it’s nothing in here about the girl,” the middleman points out, and he swivels his head slowly around the room, making sure that the boys are listening as well. “Ainsworth says you already twig the secrecy of it, but I’m to remind you anyway. No one knows of this but us. That is part of the agreement.” He looks Owen square in the face. “Ainsworth claims he offered you a living with no rent at all. That so?”
“Ah,” Owen nods, “but the land would have remained in his hands.”
Mr. McPherson rolls his eyes in disbelief. “There’s men would trade their own mothers for an enfeoffment such as that.” He shows Owen where to make his mark at the bottom of the page. “I told Ainsworth that this will be a sure cause for regret, for him and you both.” He closes the ledger and shakes his head.
“And besides,” the middleman says, “she’s already passed on, you know.”
Finn starts forward and Moira gasps.
“The child?” Owen looks from Moira to Finn. “She was right as could be when I handed her to him.”
“The child is fine.” Mr. McPherson slips the ledger beneath his arm and turns to leave. “It’s Mrs. Ainsworth, I mean. Poor woman did not last the night.”
For days afterward, Owen and Moira and the boys keep an eye out for the middleman’s return, sure that he will come to say that Mr. Ainsworth has changed his mind, that the lease has been torn from the ledger, that Siobhan will be sent back to them now that he has no need of her. But a week passes, and another, and they hear nothing more about it. Finn tries to put Siobhan from his thoughts until all that remains is his remorse for the accident with the hammer. Sometimes he dreams of sneaking off in the darkness of the new moon with the girl in his arms and over his shoulder a sack with the hard leavings of bread and a pointed stick to spear fish in the Nore. He cannot quell the hope that one day Siobhan will return and everything will again be made as it was. He mentions this to no one, but one night Moira tells him, as if she can read his thoughts upon his face, that nothing can change the past. Siobhan is as a sister to you always, Moira whispers, and she will yet need the aid of her brother.
At the end of each month, Owen notches the soft wood of the doorframe for the payment made. He begins near the floor so that he will have space enough, and he counts the marks aloud every morning to remind the boys how many are left until one hundred and eighty months have passed. As the months come and go, the notches march steadily up the doorframe, but the boys take no encouragement from this. Fifteen years is a lifetime away, and each payment wants nearly twice as much work as before. Finn drives himself to do more than the other boys, even though they, too, have doubled their efforts, but after the first year, the notches reach no higher than their ankles, and Andrew grumbles that the cottage will likely collapse before they are finished. Two years into the new agreement, a fierce storm brings swift ruin to the harvest, and soon after a slow creeping mold takes what little remains, leaving behind empty larders and farmers who can ill afford new tools or repairs to the old. Patrick measures the unmarked span of the doorframe in finger-widths, and he points out the great number of notches yet to be cut, and Dermott and Liam groan over the unlikelihood that they will ever be able to satisfy what is owed. Mr. McPherson warns Owen that every payment missed will add to the sum twice over, and soon enough Finn can read the future as clearly as Andrew.
Patrick is the first to go. He waits one more year beyond the bad harvest, and he tells Owen and Moira that the Irish Army will pay well enough to help with the lease. Owen urges his son to stay; he says he will ask Mr. Ainsworth for extra work, says he will go to Thomastown and New Ross and Enniscorthy to see if there is need for a blacksmith. The next harvest will be better and they will exhaust themselves with the making of scythes and shovels and plows. Soon there will be work enough for all of them, Owen insists. But Patrick is not convinced. He leaves for Dublin in the middle of night in the summer of 1766, and a month later Duggan Clare brings them a slip of paper folded around three shilling coins and tied tightly with string, and the note inside—clumsily scrawled in an unknown hand—indicates that Patrick O’Siodha will be sent to India. And after this there are no more notes.
And a year further on, Liam and Dermott boast that they will earn more than enough in the rough work of whaling to settle the debt, and before they leave for Waterford Harbor, they promise to send a portion of their wages whenever they can. But the routes of broad-hulled whalers are treacherous, and the ships that leave Waterford almost always outnumber those that return. Of the hundreds of bundled letters passed ship to ship on the dark and cold expanse of the North Atlantic, it’s a precious few that finally reach waiting hands. Owen and Moira and Andrew and Finn hear nothing more from Liam and Dermott, and they are left to wonder whether the boys walk upon the warm shores of a bright and distant continent or lie on the bottom of the deep.
And then Andrew, with hardly a word of argument, signs himself into servitude for passage to Newfoundland and the promise of reward when his seven years are done—an eternity when each failed harvest at home spells another year of hunger and debt. When Andrew sets out for Belfast to board the ship that will carry him to the other side of the world, Owen says nothing to discourage him; he stands at the hearth with thick hands clasped behind, and he stares at the flames that had proved such a fascination for his eldest son.
The change in circumstance came slow, and then swift. Finn can hardly grasp how it is that he finds himself nearly alone again. It had seemed a miracle, that after being abandoned by his father he had just as soon found himself embraced by a new family, and yet now, in hardly the blink of an eye, that family too has fallen to pieces. Andrew had warned that Finn’s arrival would bring trouble, and now Finn blames himself for the deep furrows in Owen’s forehead and the darkness under Moira’s eyes, for he had appeared at their door with a note pinned to his shirt and shortly thereafter brought Siobhan into their home, and none of this had they asked for. He had caused all of it. He had knocked over the hammer that crushed Siobhan’s little arm, and had he not found her in the first place, Owen would never have been able to make the ruinous agreement with Mr. Ainsworth. And now the great debt hangs over Owen’s head. The cottage feels empty without the other boys, and Finn knows
that when Owen and Moira look at him, they see their absent sons. He cannot leave them; he must do something to set things right.
Finn tries to prove his worth at the fire, tries to help meet the burden of the lease that falls heavier now on their shoulders, but he is ill-suited for the brute work of the forge. His shoulders and hips are narrow, his fingers are thin and tapered, and even after he has blistered his thumbs with the pinchers and bruised his knuckles with the heavy hammer, even after he has raised calluses across his palms, his hands cannot match the thickness of Owen’s. One year folds itself into the next and Finn stands taller than the notches on the doorframe, but not so sturdy as the memory of the boys, and always he feels dwarfed by their lingering shadows. He reassures Owen that together they will satisfy the terms of the lease and that the boys might yet return, and he knows that this faint hope draws Owen from his bed each morning and helps Moira through her days on hands and knees digging in the dark soil of the lazy beds.
In the forge Finn begins taking on the small jobs too delicate for Owen’s blunt fingers: mending scissors, sharpening knives, tinkering with the tumblers in rusted locks. The work is hardly enough to keep pace with what they owe Arthur Ainsworth. Finn’s only intent is to save Owen the trouble, until Duggan Clare appears at their door with a small timepiece that he says once sat in his father’s own pocket but ceased its ticking after falling into a butt of wine. The publican smells of soured ale, his fingers tanned from years of drawing tankards of dark porter. He is much younger than Owen, but his eyes are sunk deep and already his neck and shoulders have begun to slump, as if he were really a tall man draped over a shorter man’s bones. Owen palms the silent watch, shakes it at his ear, hands it back to Duggan and says he can do nothing for it. Finn notes how small the timepiece looks in their hands, and he asks if he might attempt its repair.