Page 5 of One Bed for the Bluestocking
He laughed nervously and rubbed the back of his neck.“I’m afraid I have a tendency to get carried away.”He lifted his pad.“Would you like to see the sketches?”
Nat resisted the urge to smile.“I’ve seen them already.Did you not notice me peering over your shoulder?”
“I did not.”The effusive young man who had been excited at the prospect of sketching a live puma was gone, leaving the awkward fellow Nathaniel had met in his office in his wake.
Kit cleared his throat.“These are only sketches.I’m sure you’ll want to see a more finished product before deciding if I’m right for the position.If you’ll give me a week, I can turn these into proper watercolor illustrations.”
It was on the tip of Nathaniel’s tongue to say,the position is yours.But it probably behooved him to err on the side of caution.He’d already wasted months after being forced to hire the wrong illustrator.It wasn’t a mistake he cared to repeat.
He inclined his head.“I would appreciate that.As you may recall from the advertisement, the position is funded by a scholarship available only to university students.Have you enrolled?”
“Not yet,” Kit confessed.
“Well, see to it that you get your name added to the books.Lectures start on Monday.”
Kit ducked his head.“It’s probably too late to find a tutor willing to take me on.”
“You’ve found him.”Nathaniel brought his palm to his chest.“Me.I assume you wish to study the natural sciences?”
Kit nodded.“I mean… I do.”
“Then I’m your tutor.But don’t worry.I have room for you.I currently have three first-year students.You’ll make four.”
Kit flinched, startled.“Out of the entire incoming class, there are only three undergraduates studying the natural sciences?”
“There are a couple of entomology students as well.They study under Iain’s tutor, Andrew Thompson.”Nat gestured to the door, and they headed out.“The university is best known for its medical school.More than half of the students enrolled are studying to be physicians.”
This preponderance of physicians was something the University of Edinburgh had in common with Nathaniel’s family.His father was a doctor, as were his three brothers.It was also the reason Nathaniel’s parents had sent him to Scotland nine years ago—so he could attend the university’s famous medical school.Medicine was a popular career path for Black men of some means from Jamaica, where Nathaniel was born.Most of the guilds that oversaw the skilled trades did not allow Black men to be members, barring them from a number of well-paid jobs.The army and the navy had once been a potential path, but after the long war with France, there was currently an oversupply of officers fighting over a scant few active-duty posts.
That left law and medicine, and a half-dozen or so sons of well-to-do Black Jamaicans came to Scotland each year to secure their membership in these lucrative professions.Nathaniel had dutifully completed his medical coursework during his first year at university.
But that year, during the spring term, he had made The Mistake.
The Mistake was auditing a series of lectures taught by Professor William Kerr, the Chair of Natural History.It wasn’t that Professor Kerr’s lectures were fascinating.They were not.Although he was learned in his subject, he was widely regarded as one of the dullest lecturers at the university.
But even so, it did not escape Nathaniel’s notice that he found natural history a thousand times more intriguing than medical science.The natural world was awe-inspiring in a way that medicine simply was not.
He had confessed his uncertainty about his course of study to his brother, Thomas, who had been in his third year of medical studies at the time.Thomas had done his best to talk him out of it.“Medicine isn’t that different from natural science,” Thomas had argued.“Think of it as a sub-specialty of natural science focusing on the human species.”
Nat rolled his eyes.“Oh, yes.Focusing on their hemorrhoids, their ringworm, their pinkeye, and their?—”
Thomas held up a hand.“All right, maybe it isn’t always pleasant.Do you know what else is unpleasant?Living in a drafty attic garret and having to take your meals down at the pub because you can’t afford a single servant at the age of forty-five.”
“There are jobs in the natural sciences,” Nat grumbled.
“There are,” Thomas agreed.“Three of them, by my count.Which one do you think they’ll give you?”
His brother wasn’t wrong.Salaried positions in natural history were vanishingly rare.But his career was on an excellent track, thank you very much.There was no shame in being a university fellow at the age of seven and twenty.And he’d been made a tutor, an honor which only a small fraction of fellows achieved!
Besides, Nathaniel had hope.Professor Kerr was in his sixties.He was bound to step down from the Natural History Chair sooner or later.And when he did, Nathaniel intended to make sure that he was so exceedingly well-qualified that appointing anyone else to the post would seem like an outrage.Nat had long known that it would not do merely to be better than his peers.He was a Black man, and that meant that if he wanted to get anywhere in this world, he had to be three times as good as everyone else.
It was therefore imperative that he build up a body of first-rate scientific research.This upcoming trip to the Isle of Lewis would be the first step.He had received information about a remote loch where nesting pairs of golden eagles made their homes.He would start with a comprehensive study of their nesting behavior.
He peered at his companion out of the corner of his eye.Kit also had an important role to play.Nathaniel’s research would be top-notch.He would make sure of it.
But there was a reason he had scrimped and saved these past three years to make sure he had sufficient funds to bring along an illustrator.A scientific paper wasn’t what you would call flashy.Illustrations like the ones Kit was capable of producing, on the other hand?Those were what could take a dry scientific treatise and turn it into a popular phenomenon.Instead of his paper being buried in a journal that twelve people would read, Nat hoped that the school would allow him to present it as a special exhibition at this very museum.Kit’s illustrations would draw in the crowds, would make people who would never venture more than ten miles from the place they’d been born feel like they, too, had been on a fantastic voyage to the Isle of Lewis.
Kit’s success would be Nathaniel’s success, too.They would help each other.
