Page 35
“In return, you’ll tell us about China,” said Kelyn. “I have so many questions.”
“I’ll describe every hillside,” Lavinia promised, and pressed her notebook more tightly to her side.
—
Sheltering beneath an outcropping of rock with Reverend Henry Curnow, Neal watched the rain fall in sheets. Thick mist blanketed the sea, and the dark jagged cliffs across the harbor poked out like the turrets of a ruined castle. Impossible not to imagine gazing upon them with a fairer companion than the good reverend.
He could feel Muriel’s hair tickling under his chin as she nestled against him, feel the warmth and pressure of her body. Imagination conjured sensation—the two of them standing front to back, dry in the slate alcove as the storm crescendoed in the theater of the sky.
Rain slapped him in the face.
“Chr—” He wiped his streaming brow, biting off the word. Curnow was an old friend of the family, a passionate rambler and botanist in his own right, given to quoting Bishop Newton in his sermons.
True philosophy is the handmaid of true religion and the knowledge of the works of nature will lead us to the knowledge of the God of nature.
Even so, churchmen of all stripes frowned on blasphemy.
“Curses,” Neal finished, and Curnow laughed his deep laugh. A big man, he sent his voice up from the center of his frame, where it resonated wonderfully. His parishioners were touchingly vain of him.
Fit for a cathedral was what they said. Didn’t stop the farmers from falling asleep in the back pews. Or the gentry from grumbling about the cost of restoring the parish church.
“A bad gale this is.” Curnow shook his head. “I know you don’t mind a drenching, Neal, but I won’t have your skull cleaved in two by flying slates. The church will be going to pieces in this wind.”
Neal leaned out from the alcove, squinting up the cliff path. He could see a thin sliver of the church between the rocks, the black tower holding fast against the racing clouds. Still standing. Curnow wanted to tour him through the nave so he could see the plants growing beneath the holes in the roof.
“If it’s not Elatine hexandra sprouted in the font, I’ll eat my hat,” said Curnow, touching the wide brim. “And you might find your dandelion in the aisle.” He sighed. “Not today, though. Will you stay a spell?”
“Through tomorrow.” Neal angled himself behind a projection of rock. “Then we head west.”
Curnow’s broad face looked suddenly bland. Too bland. He was trying not to smile. It was the we that had done it.
When Neal had dropped in at the vicarage after the deluge drove him from Juliot woods, he’d spoken of Muriel in neutral tones, but the old man’s ear had pricked at once. Just as quickly, he’d tried to mask his interest, bringing out his notes and a medal-worthy collection of Hepaticae.
Curnow was one of dozens of local botanists contributing invaluable lists for Neal’s flora. He also belonged, covertly, to another group—no less sizable, it seemed, in number. Neal thought he might call it the Neal Traymayne Bachelor Relief Society. His mother was the president, of course. Neal wouldn’t put it past her to have written to Curnow, asking him to scour the parish for well-read young women with established aptitudes in fields including, but not limited to, geology, entomology, zoology, and botany.
“Tomorrow, then.” Curnow rubbed his damp whiskers. “We’ll walk up together, with this Mrs. Pendrake if she’s amenable.”
He produced a pipe, but another wet gust seemed to make him rethink the plausibility of a satisfactory smoke. Sighing, he returned it to his pocket. “I hope that by your next visit the church is no longer the site of botanical interest.”
“I’d drink to that,” said Neal, grinning. His father and Curnow used to meet for pints in Kyncastle’s only pub and talk long past closing, standing in the street and projecting their voices—as only drunken professors and parsons could—so that the whole village was privy to their conversations. As a boy, Neal would hang out the window to listen. Even then, the topics included the parish church’s various dilapidations. “It’s been a long time coming.”
Curnow’s thoughts seemed to have hewed to Neal’s.
“Your father knew how to tip a glass.” He looked at Neal. His eyes were close and deeply set under heavy gray brows.
“He rejoices with us now,” he added, in a lower register. “But on a farther shore.”
Neal let the back of his head rest on the rock. Platitudes. They occurred in speech and in thought and let the mind paper over any manner of unpleasant truths.
“I can accept a god as first cause.” The rock bit into his skull, just hard enough to hurt. “But I cannot believe my father’s drinking ale in heaven.”
“What do you believe?” Curnow’s voice held only gentle curiosity. Neal studied the rain. It had slowed to a patter, the sheets disaggregating into drops.
“That he’s soil. That he’s mixed with quartz and serpentine and carbonate of lime and foraminifera and sedges and grasses, and fresh and salt water.”
The words scraped a little in his throat. If what he said was truth, he didn’t know how to feel about it. Death was both more and less final than he’d learned on Sundays.
Scripture inspired Curnow, but time and again he’d demonstrated his willingness to entertain ways of thinking that deviated from chapter and verse. His reply had a musing quality.
