More than anything, she longed for family—and the sort of family with whom she’d been raised: sharp, inquiring, challenging, and intelligent. She wanted to feel like a Whittaker again, surrounded by Whittakers. But since there were no more Whittakers left in the world (aside from Prudence Whittaker Dixon, who was busy with her school; and aside from whatever members of her father’s appalling and unknown clan had not yet died in English prisons) then she wanted to be around the van Devenders.
If they would have her.
But what if they would not have her? Well, that was the gamble. The van Devenders—whatever remained of them—might not long for her company quite as profoundly as she longed for theirs. They might not welcome her offered contributions to the Hortus. They might see her as nothing but an interloper, an amateur. It had been a precarious play for Alma to have left her treatise with her uncle Dees. His reaction to her work might be anything—from boredom (the mosses of Philadelphia?), to religious offense (continuous creation?), to scientific alarm (a theory for the entire natural world?). Alma knew that her paper ran the risk of making her look reckless, arrogant, naive, anarchistic, degenerate, and even a tiny bit French. Yet her paper was also—more than anything else—a portrait of her capacities, and she wished for her family to know her capacities, if they were to know her at all.
Should the van Devenders and the Hortus Botanicus turn Alma away, however, she resolved to square her shoulders and carry on. Perhaps she would take up residence in Amsterdam regardless, or perhaps she would return to Rotterdam, or perhaps she would move to Leiden and live near the university there. If not Holland, there was always France, always Germany. She could find a position elsewhere, perhaps even at another botanical garden. It was difficult for a woman, but not impossible—especially with her father’s name and Dick Yancey’s influence to lend her credibility. She knew of all the prominent professors of bryology in Europe; many had been her correspondents over the years. She could seek them out, and ask to become somebody’s assistant. Alternatively, she could always teach—not at the university level, but one could always find a position as a governess within an affluent family somewhere. If not botany, she could teach languages. Heaven knows, she had enough of them in her head.
She walked the city for hours. She was not ready to return to the hotel. She could not imagine sleeping. She both missed Roger and felt liberated without him trailing along behind her. She did not yet have a grasp of Amsterdam’s geography, so she wandered, losing and finding herself, through the city’s curious shape—meandering all around its great half-drawn bow, with its five giant, curving canals. She crossed over waterways again and again, on dozens of bridges whose names she did not know. She strolled along Herengracht, admiring the handsome homes with their forked chimneys and jutting gables. She passed the Palace. She found the central post office. She found a café, where she was at last able to order a plate of her own wentelteefjes, which she ate with more pleasure than any meal she could remember—while at the same time reading an oldish copy of Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper, which some kind British tourist had probably left behind.
Night fell, and she kept walking. She passed ancient churches and new theaters. She saw taverns and gin shops and arcades and worse. She saw old Puritans in short cloaks and neck ruffs, looking as if they had stepped out of the time of Charles I. She saw young women with their arms bared, beckoning men into darkened doorways. She saw—and smelled—the herring-packing concerns. She saw the houseboats along the canals, with their thrifty potted gardens and prowling cats. She walked through the Jewish quarter, and saw the workshops of the diamond cutters. She saw foundling hospitals and orphanages; she saw printing houses and banks and countinghouses; she saw the tremendous central flower market, shuttered for the night. All around her—even at this late hour—she sensed the hum of commerce.
Amsterdam—built on silt and stilts, protected and maintained by pumps, sluices, valves, dredging machines, and dikes—struck Alma not so much as a city, but as an engine, a triumph of human industriousness. It was the most contrived place one could ever imagine. It was the sum of human intelligence. It was perfect. She never wanted to leave.
It was long after midnight when she finally returned to her hotel. Her feet were blistering in their new shoes. The proprietress did not respond kindly to her late-night knock on the door.
“Where is your dog?” demanded the woman.
“I’ve left him with a friend.”
“Humph,” said the woman. She could not have looked more disapproving if Alma had said, “I’ve sold him to a gypsy.”
She handed Alma her key. “No men in your room tonight, remember.”
Not tonight, nor any other night, my dear, thought Alma. But thank you for even imagining it.
The next morning, Alma was awakened by a pounding on her door. It was her old friend, the peevish hotel proprietress.
“There’s a coach waiting for you, lady!” the woman yelled, in a voice as pure as tar.
Alma stumbled to the door. “I am not expecting a coach,” she said.
“Well, it’s expecting you,” yelled the woman. “Get dressed. The man says he ain’t leaving without you. Take your bags, he says. He paid your room already. I don’t know where these people get the idea that I am a messenger service.”
Alma, muzzy-headed, dressed and packed her two small bags. She took a little extra time to make her bed—perhaps conscientiously, or perhaps because she was stalling. What coach? Was she being arrested? Expatriated? Was this some sort of a flimflam, a trick played on tourists? But she wasn’t a tourist.
She came downstairs and found a liveried driver, waiting for her beside a modest private carriage.
“Good morning, Miss Whittaker,” he said, tipping his hat. He tossed her bags up by his seat in the front. She had the worst feeling she was about to be put on a train.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t believe I requested a coach.”
“Dr. van Devender sent me,” he said, opening the carriage door. “Up you go, now—he’s waiting, and anxious to see you.”
It took nearly an hour to wind through the city back to the botanical gardens. Alma thought it would have been far faster to walk. More soothing, too. She would have been less agitated, could she have walked. The driver delivered her at last, next to a fine brick house just behind the Hortus, on Plantage Parklaan.
“Go on,” he said over his shoulder, fussing with her bags. “Let yourself in—door’s open. He’s waiting for you, I say.”
It was somewhat unsettling for Alma to let herself in to a private home unannounced, but she did as directed. Then again, this home was not entirely foreign, either. If she was not mistaken, her mother had been born here.
She saw an open door just off the receiving hallway, and peeked inside. It was the parlor. She saw her uncle sitting on a divan, waiting for her.
The first thing she noticed was that Roger the dog—incredibly—was curled up on his lap.
The second thing she noticed was that Uncle Dees was holding her treatise in his right hand, resting it lightly on Roger’s back, as though the dog were a portable writing desk.
The third thing she noticed was that her uncle’s face was wet with tears. His shirt collar was also soaked. His beard appeared to be soaked, as well. His chin was trembling, and his eyes were alarmingly red. It looked as if he had been weeping for hours.
“Uncle Dees!” She rushed to his side. “Whatever is the matter?”
The old man swallowed and took her hand in his. His hand was hot and damp. For some time he could not speak at all. He clutched her fingers tightly. He would not let go of her.