“More than we wish,” said Yancey, giving Alma a warning look that chilled her. Lord, she did not like this man, though her father much admired him. Dick Yancey, Alma’s father had told her once in a tone of real pride, was a useful fellow to have around in the settling of arguments, as he settled them not with words, but with knives. The two men had met on the docks of Sulawesi in 1788, when Henry had watched Yancey beat a pair of British naval officers into politeness without speaking a single word. Henry had immediately hired him as his agent and enforcer, and the two men had been plundering the world together ever since.
Alma had always been terrified of Dick Yancey. Everybody was. Even Henry called Dick “a trained crocodile,” and had once said, “It’s difficult to say which is more dangerous—a trained crocodile or a wild one. One way or another, I would not leave my hand resting in his mouth for long, God bless him.”
Even as a child, Alma innately comprehended that there were two types of silent men in the world: one type was meek and deferential; the other type was Dick Yancey. His eyes were a pair of slowly circling sharks, and as he stared at Alma now, those eyes were clearly saying: “Bring the rum.”
So Alma went down to the cellar and obediently brought up the rum—two full bottles of it, one for each man. Then she went out to her carriage house, to disappear into her work and escape the drunkenness in store. Long after midnight, she fell asleep on her divan, uncomfortable as it was, rather than return to the house. She awoke at dawn and walked across the Grecian garden to take her breakfast in the big house. As she approached the house, though, she could hear that her father and Dick Yancey were still awake. They were singing sailors’ songs at top volume. Henry may not have been to sea in three decades, but he still knew all the songs.
Alma stopped at the entrance, leaned against the door, and listened. Her father’s voice, echoing through the mansion in the gray morning light, sounded miserable and lurid and exhausted. It sounded like a haunting from a distant ocean.
Not two weeks later, on the morning of August 10, 1820, Beatrix Whittaker fell down the great staircase at White Acre.
She had woken early that morning, and must have been feeling well enough that she thought she could do some work in the gardens. She had put on her old leather gardening slippers, gathered her hair into her stiff Dutch cap, and headed down the stairs to go to work. But the steps of the staircase had been waxed the day before, and the soles of Beatrix’s leather slippers were too slick. She toppled forward.
Alma was in her study in the carriage house already, hard at work editing a paper for Botanica Americana on the carnivorous vestibules of the bladderwort, when she saw Hanneke de Groot running across the Grecian garden toward her. Alma’s first thought was how comic it was to see the old housekeeper running—skirts flapping and arms pumping, her face red and strained. It was like watching a giant barrel of ale, dressed in a gown, bounce and roll across the yard. She nearly laughed aloud. In the very next moment, however, Alma sobered. Hanneke was obviously alarmed, and this was not a woman who was generally subject to alarm. Something dreadful must have occurred.
Alma thought: My father is dead.
She put her hand to her heart. Please, no. Please, not my father.
Now Hanneke was at her door, wide-eyed and wild, panting for breath. The housekeeper choked, swallowed, and blurted it out: “Je moeder is dood.”
Your mother is dead.
The servants had carried Beatrix back to her bedroom and laid her across the bed. Alma was almost afraid to enter; she had rarely been allowed in her mother’s bedroom. She could see that her mother’s face had turned gray. There was a contusion rising on her forehead, and her lips were split and bloodied. The skin was cold. Servants surrounded the bed. One of the maids was holding a mirror under Beatrix’s nose, looking for any signs of breath.
“Where is my father?” Alma asked.
“Still sleeping,” said a maid.
“Don’t wake him,” Alma commanded. “Hanneke, loosen her stays.”
Beatrix had always worn her clothing tight across the bodice—respectably, firmly, suffocatingly tight. They turned the body to its side, and Hanneke released the lacing. Still, Beatrix did not breathe.
Alma turned to one of the younger servants—a boy who looked as though he could run quickly.
“Bring me sal volatile,” she said.
He stared at her blankly.
Alma realized that, in her haste and agitation, she had just used Latin with this child. She corrected herself. “Bring me ammonium carbonate.”
Again, the blank look. Alma spun and glanced at everyone else in the room. All she saw were confused faces. Nobody knew what she was talking about. She wasn’t using the right words. She searched her mind. She tried again.
“Bring me spirit of hartshorn,” she said.
But, no, that wasn’t the familiar term, either—or would not be for these people. Hartshorn was an archaic usage, something only a scholar would know. She clenched shut her eyes and searched for the most recognizable possible name of what she wanted. What did ordinary people call it? Pliny the Elder had called it hammoniacus sal. Thirteenth-century alchemists used it all the time. But references to Pliny would be of no help in this situation, nor was thirteenth-century alchemy of much service to anyone in this room. Alma cursed her mind as a dustbin of dead languages and useless particulars. She was losing precious time here.
Finally, she remembered. She opened her eyes and barked out a command that actually worked: “Smelling salts!” she cried. “Go! Find them! Bring them to me!”
Quickly, the salts were produced. It took nearly less time to find them than it had taken Alma to name them.
Alma wafted the crystals under her mother’s nose. With a wet, rattling gasp, Beatrix took a breath. The circle of maids and servants emitted various bleats and gasps of shock, and one woman shouted, “Praise God!”
So Beatrix was not dead, but she remained senseless for the next week. Alma and Prudence took turns sitting with their mother, watching her throughout the days and the long nights. On the first night, Beatrix vomited in her sleep, and Alma cleaned her. She also wiped away the urine and the foul waste.
Alma had never before seen her mother’s body—not beyond the face, the neck, the hands—but when she bathed the inanimate form on the bed, she could see that her mother’s breasts were misshapen with several hard lumps in each. Tumors. Large ones. One of the tumors had ulcerated through the skin, and was leaking a dark fluid. The sight of this made Alma feel as though she herself might topple over. The word for it came to her mind in Greek: Karkinos. The crab. Cancer. Beatrix must have been diseased for quite a long while. She must have been living in torment for months, if not years. She had never complained. She had merely excused herself from the table, on the days when the suffering became unbearable, and dismissed it as common vertigo.
Hanneke de Groot barely slept at all that week, but brought compresses and broths at all hours. Hanneke wrapped fresh damp linens around Beatrix’s head, tended to the ulcerated breast, carried in buttered bread for the girls, tried to get liquids past Beatrix’s cracked lips. To her shame, Alma sometimes felt a sense of restlessness at her mother’s side, but Hanneke patiently attended to all the duties of care. Beatrix and Hanneke had been together their whole lives. They had grown up side by side at the botanical gardens of Amsterdam. They had come together on the ship from Holland. They had both left their families behind to sail to Philadelphia, never again to see parents or siblings. At times, Hanneke wept over her mistress, and prayed in Dutch. Alma did not weep or pray. Nor did Prudence—not that anyone saw.