Newton’s Niece

Mirage

‘Catherine!’ My uncle’s voice called me from my bedroom. I checked my hair and face, leaning over my dressing-table, holding my shell-backed hand-mirrors ludicrously poised behind my ears. My head hurt. My belly hurt. My skin was tender. My breasts were sore. And I’d woken feeling too hot. I tipped some scent water out and rubbed it on my wrists and temples.

‘I’m coming, Uncle!’

I’d been working at my project the night before: the last point, the one about the Lupine Disposition. How difficult it was to make myself look at it, and yet how it nagged at me and made itself of all the most important Question. How its meaning vanished out of my mind just when I thought I had the next move and was about to put my ink on to the page. What had made me feel and act as that monster? Why that animal in particular: wolf, dog, what have you? An accident of birth? A fault in my incarnation? I see myself wrestling then, as I wrestle now, with the recurring words of the room, the man, the wig and the stick.

‘Catherine!’

They were just words, leading to an impossibility, which I’d attempted to displace with those reasonable alternative explanations even as I jabbed my cut quill on to the paper in the frustration of non-recall. The words led to an impossibility, because everything I knew in the world said the opposite so loudly: that God was watching over us, that parents took care of their children, that Adam and Eve had been naughty and were deservedly expiating their sin throughout history, that the Church taught the truth through clergymen on both sides of my family, and that my Uncle Isaac had blessedly transcribed the word of the Creator for the New Age. What matter that as far as I could see, as I’ve said, Isaac’s version, his creation itself, was a deadness in a glass jar against whose hard outside God’s knuckle might knock in vain? That seemed to bother nobody else. They all seemed mightily satisfied with it, and could get on with their businesses the better for it.

‘Aren’t you ready yet!?’

“The merest moment, Uncle. My earrings. Then I’ll be down!’

‘Do try to hurry, Kit!’

Well, I’d been speechless then, yet I could sing. How could that happen? Let us with a gladsome mind. I made myself go back to that moment when it had seemed an inspired idea to give forth those words. In the body; out of the body. Out of the body, of necessity. An intelligent escape – from memory too? Had I done it before, and was that why I hadn’t bitten – because I was inured to such acts, schooled? I had been pulled back in by the act of singing while the evidence was still, I swallowed involuntarily, tangible, and the perpetrator a distinctive stranger. I shuddered. Was that why I remembered only this one time? It was dangerous to think this way. Someone might get hurt; die even.

I scurried down the main stairs, scrunching a fistful of brocade in each hand to clear the skirts from where my shoes were treading. I had on my best blue shoes.

Charles was in the saloon. He had his back to the fire. He was quietly, almost casually dressed, as he often was when he called on us. But his wig was an imposing affair, designed perhaps, like his shoes, to increase his height: a great man. My uncle hovered near the door, while Pet stood with a tray for coffee.

‘Here’s Kit,’ said my uncle. ‘Sit down, Kit.’ I sat in a chair by the wall under the landscape of Greenwich Park. Looking down at my blue shoes poking out as evidence of my legs, I felt painfully self-conscious. The fire made it too hot. Although it was November, there was a freak mugginess to the day.

‘How are you, Catherine?’ Charles said.

‘Well, thank you, my Lord,’ I lied, feeling the room sweat.

Charles laughed. It was a private joke. He’d not made much secret of his angling for a thorough ennoblement, but it was as yet only a royal promise.

‘You look bright. And in good form,’ he said.

My mouth was dry. ‘I feel a touch out of sorts. Maybe I’m starting a cold.’

‘Pull up a chair yourself, Charles,’ said my uncle. Charles placed himself smoothly opposite me. He smiled. Pet put the tray on a little table before the hearth.

‘You’re relaxed enough, man,’ my uncle observed, ‘for someone who’s lost everything.’

‘Lost everything?’ I said, startled for a moment out of my discomfort.

‘Everything,’ Charles smiled again. ‘All my political career, at least.’ He snapped his fingers and reached out for his coffee. ‘For a week or two.’

‘Charles has resigned,’ explained Isaac.

‘But that was months ago,’ I said.

‘The Exchequer.’ Charles pulled at his lace cuff. ‘Yesterday I threw in at the Treasury as well. As far as lordships go I’m no longer the First of the T.’

‘But the recoinage!’

‘Yes, Catherine. Everything leaks away, even despite your uncle’s massive endeavours. Or gets melted away, I should say. And government’s always a fickle thing. You drudge for years to rescue the country from its recurring propensity to fall to pieces, and what thanks do you get?’ He looked at my uncle. ‘But your position’s assured, Isaac. And I don’t care so much about mine. One could do with a rest; or a change. The death of my poor wife.’ He looked back to me. ‘Time,’ he said. Time for one’s own concerns.’

I thought of the mistresses he’d had, or was alleged to have had. And of the antique Duchess, married for sheer advancement, who had conveniently died last year. A man who was attractive to women, thirty-eight, with power, rank, money, in excess. Looks? How should I know? Good teeth? Mostly. Height? No. What exactly would be required of me?

‘Ingrates!’ My uncle exploded quietly and subsided. Then, like a grumbling Etna, he gave out some more blasts: ‘Bank of England … currency reform … East India Company … Exchequer Bills … General Mortgage … Could I begin to list … Ingrates … national saviour … d’you hear, Kit?’ Charles beamed and then looked mod-. estly down.

‘Window tax,’ I muttered.

‘Kit!’ Shushed my uncle. Charles laughed. Uncle Isaac said he’d go out and see what on earth was keeping the girl with the coffee refill. What was she doing with it, he wanted to know. The door clicked meaningfully behind him. I looked at my nails, and then across the space at the dull London day outside the window. A dozen chimneys leached grey into grey. I drank from the coffee dish which had lain so far untouched in my lap. The hot, sweet stuff helped. When would he start?

‘Time, Kit,’ Charles said slowly.

‘Time. Yes.’ I looked steadily at him for a moment, and then away.

‘I’ve a word game. You must help. We’re in a house of numbers, so I’ll make a metaphor to suit. When I give out you must continue.’ We had played such games, but now I felt my head swimming. He said: ‘In our world of mathematics, time is a line I might draw on a sheet of paper. A pathway. Two. As many as you like. Some lines intersecting, or curving together. Some, thanks to your uncle, whose rate of approach can be notated, even predicted.’ The coffee I’d drunk lay queasily on my stomach, but I fought the feeling down because I wanted my wits about me. I wanted to do the right thing -for all concerned, including me; but I couldn’t for the life of me think what the right thing might be. Charles went on: ‘How many young women could I speak so to?’

‘Of analysis?’ I said. ‘Or of fluxions? Hardly to me. Did your wife appreciate mathematics?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I never asked her. I never seemed to have the time. Which of course may also be conceived of as … a train of dots – moments – each infinitesimally small; adding up to … this. Us. Now. No, now. Gone. Now. How they escape us as we try to catch them.’ He gestured as if to pluck the time as it flew. ‘Carpe diem.’ Then he spread his hands to indicate our presence in the room, with the fire and the coffee table and the window. ‘Are you for lines or dots, Kit?’

I couldn’t think. Usually I’d have come up with something sharp. ‘I can’t tell,’ I said lamely.

‘You’re not yourself, Kit. What is it? You don’t call me Charles and make me feel merry. You don’t cut me down to size.’

‘Lines, Charles,’ I tried, flagging up a smile. ‘The fire. Surely it’s very hot in here, don’t you find?’ I really did feel thoroughly uncomfortable in myself, and he’d hardly said anything about the matter in hand, with his elaborate address. He went to open the window for me.

‘Come here and get some fresh air. You look poorly, my dear. My dearest. Kit.’ He put his arm on my waist. I froze. I didn’t know how to act. ‘Our lines first crossed when you were ill at Cambridge. You were fourteen, I believe. How old are you now?’

‘Nineteen.’ Were my teeth chattering?

‘I pray you’re not ill again now that we curve together. Heavens, these are hard lines. A shared locus. Asymptote. No. The game defeats me and you shall have to help me out. Help, Kit.’ His hand played with the gatherings at the top of my skirt, his fingers just pressing in to find the flesh of my hip. I wondered sweatily what figure he’d have used if I’d said dots. But the game had defeated me from its outset. I think it was something he’d composed and was hoping to pass off as spontaneous – a word-screen to hide behind. Yes I really did feel as though there was something more wrong than I could put down to emotional stress. Had Pet laced me too tightly? ‘I’m sorry’ I said. ‘Let me sit down.’ But before I could do so a wave of nauseous faintness swept over me and I fell – or would have fallen had he not caught me in his arms and held tightly on to me. I recall his forceful hand next to the fabric roll at my buttock. It was at this moment that my uncle returned to the room.

I remember finding myself in a carriage – a specially hired one, I imagine, because I don’t think we owned one at that point – sitting opposite Pet. I remember there was singing coming from beyond the window – no doubt some balladeer at a public house. It was a country scene as I looked out, and Pet said to me: ‘Don’t touch your face.’ She intercepted the hand I was involuntarily raising as I stirred from my drowse.

‘What?’ I said.

‘Your face. You mustn’t touch it.’

‘Why not?’

‘Madam. Miss Kit. Your illness.’ She looked at Pawnee.

‘Ah!’ I said.

Once the worst of the temperature and delirium had begun to abate they’d lost no time in shipping me off to better air. My uncle wrote to me at Mr Gyre’s farm north of Oxford, also alarmed for my face and suggesting cow’s milk for the remains of the fever.

l am

Your very loving Unkle

Is. Newton

I am very comfortable here I thank you, my dearest Uncle Isaac. Charles’s man saw to everything and the people, and then returned to London, having ridden beside the coach all the way and made sure that we were provided for most generously in the journey. I am well enough recovered to write, and to be up and about in the house; which is very well kept up and quite large. Mrs Gyre has been most kind, as have all in the household. I want for nothing and am not permitted to exert myself. They make sure I rest after meals on a settee in front of the fire. Indeed the weather has been very cold, but the airs are fresh and no doubt do me good. I shall be writing to my mother and to my sister Margaret to tell them not to worry any more on my score. Pawnee and Pet keep me company and play me at cards; and make sure that I do not give way to scratching! Which I can assure you is a hard thing to do, as the pocks are very provoking until they fall off. We go out for strolls beyond the herb garden when the sun shines. Pet is very taken with the life in the country and the Landscapes that are to be seen; she is wide-eyed at having so much of an horizon, and thanks you very much for the gift of the coat. She wishes me to send her love and duty to Tony and Mary and that she is quite well, and so I would beg you to pass this on. Please also pass my love and best wishes to Etta; I believe her vomitings are usual and will pass. I hope you are recovered from your cold in the head and that the temporary setbacks you mentioned are now resolved. It would please me to know when you would have me home.

Your obedient Niece and Humble Servant

C. Barton

The moon had shone into my bedroom where a last drench of fever was flushing through me. I’d opened the window to get the freeze of the air on to my skin, and then I’d seen my moonlit self in the mirror. I’d sat with my shift off my shoulders poking, scratching and squeezing at the pock scabs on my face. I don’t know whether I’d wanted to rid myself of them or to scar myself, my dangerous beauty, for life.

But now it was Spring. I was recovered. My uncle had insisted that I stay out of the city until I could be reckoned safe. It was strange to have been ill and to have been, in a sense, mothered by the people around me. Women’s arms embraced me as if I belonged. The old house was relaxed and safe in a way that I’d never known before. The place had no hooks, no sense of dark memories. The look of the timbers didn’t make me feel unaccountably tense or churned up in the stomach. They were just the timbers, and it was just a country home; for which the mistress cut flowers as soon as there were any to be had, and the com figures and drying herbs hung up comfortingly in the big kitchen, where unless there were visitors we mostly took our meals informally, all together. I say ‘all’ since there was an assortment of children and a couple of aunts of indeterminate ages, together with an old servant and a sort of housekeeper woman. Of course, I reasoned to myself at other times, it could well be that Charles was paying them to be good to me, as perhaps he was, since someone must have arranged all this. Nevertheless, overpaid or not, I couldn’t help sensing a genuineness in their treatment of me, that both pleased and threatened – I had no practice in receiving it.

My separate bedroom looked out over the wooded April scene I came to love; there, lambs and kids had begun appearing in the paddock. Yes, I still had the bad dreams, the twisted nights and violent preoccupations, but they receded into what you might call proportion; they didn’t matter so much.

Pawnee said: ‘Mrs Gyre has a gardener who has a niece.’

I said: ‘Yes, Pawnee.’

‘She is a niece you should see.’

‘Why?’

‘You’ll see when you see her. Come on.’

I followed her down into the old hall, and then out via the kitchen halfdoors. A week of warm weather had dried the mud and muck of the yard. We went beyond the new brick and timber sheds where the carts and wagons were now kept.

‘There;’ she said. ‘Good morning, Tempest. That is what he’s called. I told you I’d bring Mistress Catherine Barton. He thinks I’m a gypsy, Kit, pretending to be resident and probably up to no good.’

‘I beg yours, Ma’am,’ said the gardener, seeing that I was English-looking, and dressed as well as Pawnee.

‘I’d suspect him of blushing if his cheeks weren’t more tanned than mine anyway,’ said Pawnee. He grinned and started to spit. Then thought better of it. This wide-jawed grin held my attention. He had no overbite – his teeth met edge to edge all round. The girl with him looked up from the weeding where she was kneeling. I turned away from the curious teeth and found myself staring at her instead – with a peculiar sense of recognition. Where …?

‘Well?’ Pawnee said with a certain air of triumph. The face was the face I saw every morning in my mirror. She was my double.

‘Heavens!’ I said. And like a mirror image her eyes widened at the same time as mine – I guess as the impulse of recognition affected her too. She was, at a hazard, about seventeen. She straightened up and then reached out at a head of the rose-bush, as if to smudge away a parcel of aphids. ‘Can you tell me your name?’

‘Lucy’lizabeth, Miss.’

‘I have a confession, Kit.’

‘A confession?’

‘Now that you’re better I can tell you.’ Pawnee sat with me on my bed, holding my arm through hers, while morning sunshine flooded in from the outside world. With my free arm I put down the crust which was all that remained of my bread. ‘It’s this.’ She held out a little twist of paper. ‘This was sent by your uncle.’ She released my arm.

I unscrewed the twist. It contained a powder, blue-purplish in colour, with a few grains or crystals of white. I smelt it as if to gather something of its significance. ‘Am I supposed to eat it?’ She passed me a letter.

Madam Virginian

I believe I am at the end of my wits with distraction concerning my niece’s illness. I am relapsed into a state of mind I thought never to see again. I despair for her and would come to the country myself to doctor her condition did I not suspect my powers are subject to an alteration at present. I write to you alone with the paper herewith and must trust you, though I know little enough of you indeed, to be my niece’s true friend in this, and to keep utmost confidence regarding this letter and the powder. All the world now knows the vile accusations that have been levelled against me of late, regarding my niece, my friend, and – I hardly know how I shall write this – her position in my household. I cannot get out of the house. There is a throng of spies and intelligencers in the street. They conceal themselves but I have smoked them. The powder is the only thing that might save her, and in saving her, save also her beauty. Give him the half as a decoction and have the remnant made up with a kindly oil for his face. Leave on over the pocks. It must not be washed off. Let it fall off rather or grow away. Do as I say. It is the Stone. It is some of the fruit of the damned miracle, which I recovered at the time. Tell no one, as He may have spies that have followed her even to Woodstock to see her nakedness while he is engaged in it. As to the charges they are false. I never engaged myself with the women. These are damned lies put about by a spaniel of Hooke’s. I fear I am not well, Madam, yet she must have the powder. She must not die now. Burn this. They must not know.

Is. Newton

I re-read the letter in amazement. I’d never had the chance to see into his illness before.

‘I didn’t apply the remedy’ Pawnee said. ‘You’ve mended miraculously enough. Your skin is unblemished.’ As she smoothed my hair back from my forehead she pressed on the little painful bump so that I felt the sharpness of it.

‘Lucy Elizabeth. You see I’m convalescing, but I’m not infectious, so you won’t be in danger of the smallpox yourself. We can talk while you put these linens away for me.’

‘Yes, Miss.’

‘You’ve made me think, Lizzy. I need you to tell me things. I need you to tell me what your life holds for you.’

‘Miss?’

‘What’s going to happen to you?’

‘I don’t know, Miss. I don’t think about it.’

‘D’you think you’ll get married?’

‘Bound to, Miss.’

‘And have children?’

‘Bound to, Miss.’

‘Is that what you want?’

‘Yes, Miss.’

‘With all the attendant dangers?’

‘You mean I could be dead before I’m twenty, Miss.’

‘If you put it like that, Lizzy.’

‘If they couldn’t get the baby to come out.’

‘Or after indeed. Some women … What choice do we have, Lizzy? If we love the man who marries us.’