Lady of the Butterflies (55 page)

Summer

1687

T
he birth of Richard’s first child, my third, was so swift and easy compared with the previous two that I found it quite exhilarating, would almost go so far as to say I enjoyed it. Perhaps it was because the baby was smaller than either of Edmund’s babies had been. It was a boy, and I suggested he be named after his father, hoping it would encourage Richard to take an interest in him. Though Dickon, as he was known to avoid confusion, did not resemble his father in any way.

He looked exactly like me, flaxen-haired and blue-eyed, with skin that turned honey-colored at the first touch of the sun and was prone to a faint dusting of freckles. From the moment he was born it was clear he had my inquisitiveness too, but a gentler, more patient, altogether sweeter version of it.

It was a joy to me to encourage his interest in the world, to take him down to the moor to see the dragonflies and the otters and show him all the things I had so enjoyed being shown as a child. He was far too young as yet to comprehend how the black dots in the gelatinous spheres of frogspawn were growing tails and then legs, but I told him anyway, and it renewed my own passion for transformation. Dickon seemed to like the hatchlings best of all, the fluffy flotillas of cygnets and ducklings that glided up and down the rhynes.

My own little flock was growing rapidly. I had quickly fallen pregnant again, as half the country rejoiced in expectation of a first child being born to King James, while the other half dreaded the securing of a Catholic succession.

“The country may not be entirely united with the King in hoping for a boy but I must certainly hope you and I have another one.” Richard smiled at me as he kicked off his riding boots and pulled his shirt over his head.

I was eating a bowl of cherries, lounging on the bolsters in my bodice and petticoat, with one hand resting on the mound of my belly. “I am surprised you even have a preference,” I said, unable to help sounding critical. “You barely notice poor little Dickon. I am sure he knows, young as he is, that Forest is your favorite. Why d’you want another son?”

I had not meant to sound so sharp and I tensed in readiness for one of Richard’s tempers. Instead, he threw himself down next to me on the bed, naked save for his breeches, and held another cherry to my lips for me to bite.

“You gave Edmund a son and then a daughter,” he said with a facetiousness that was almost worse than anger, which I did not like in him at all. “I have followed him into your bed but I do not want to follow in every one of his rather shambling footsteps. I should like you to give me two sons.”

I flicked his hand away crossly. “For God’s sake, Richard, why must you turn everything into a contest?” I stared up at the tester, rolled my head toward him and dared myself to say it: “You know, sometimes when you say such things, I cannot help but wonder if you only wanted me in the first place to prove that you could take me from Edmund.”

That silenced him, though he did not appear particularly surprised or shocked by my accusation. Nor did he deny it. We simply looked at each other, as if we had reached some kind of an impasse. Then he slipped his hand down inside my bodice, began to tease my nipple with his thumb. He said: “Not much of a contest, was it?”

I gave a gasp, jerked away from him. “What’s wrong with you? That’s a horrible thing to say.” I had never seen him like this before, never heard him sound so cynical.

He tried to pull me nearer to him again but I would not let him. “Why are you angry with me all the time, Richard? Is it still because of those years when I would not see you?”

“No.”

“Thomas Knight?”

“No.”

“What, then?”

His eyes dwelt upon my face and he seemed to want to say something, struggled with himself for a moment, as if unsure of whether to speak or not, or else unsure of how to frame the words.

“Talk to me, Richard,” I said more gently. “Whatever it is, you can tell me.”

But he couldn’t, clearly. I saw him give up, almost despairingly. “Forget what I said about Edmund, Nell. I’m sorry. Please forget it, can’t you?”

“I wish you’d say what is making you unhappy.” I faced another possibility, then asked quietly, “Is it her? Do you want to be with her?”

“Who? What are you talking about?”

“That woman in Bristol.” I made myself say her name. “Sarah.”

“Hell, no.” He smiled, almost with relief, it seemed, as if for a brief moment my jealousy made him feel much better. He touched my lips. “It’s you I want, Nell. And I am not unhappy. So long as I have you, then I am quite contented.”

I smiled and frowned at the same time, because it was said with honesty and earnestness, and yet for all that he said he was content, he looked so burdened.

“You are the most puzzling person I have ever met.”

“Am I?”

“You are.”

I let him run his fingers enticingly up my petticoat. His eyes were concentrating on my face, watching to see me slowly relax under his touch, as if he was determined to turn every skill he had to making me give myself up to him, as if that might make everything all right. And who was I to deny it? Maybe it could, for a while at least. My eyes slid closed and my lips parted as he worked his fingers to pleasure me, until I was lost, whimpering and writhing on a knife edge of ecstasy and agony. He somehow knew the exact moment when I was certain I could bear no more but was also equally desperate for it never to end, and then abruptly he stopped what he was doing, began instead to torment me with his tongue until he brought me back to the summit again. It was the most exquisite kind of torture.

“Is there anything wrong with wanting to have the best and to be the best?” he whispered sweetly, seductively, as he entered me.

“You are the best, love,” I sighed. “The very best.”

He released himself inside me, as if that was all he needed to hear.

Autumn

1687

T
oo tired and heavy to walk down to the moor, I went instead to wander in the orchard. With my pregnant belly gliding before me, I was as stately as a swan. The sunlight was ripe and golden as the apples that hung heavy on the boughs, waiting to be loaded into the wagons. After a night of heavy wind, windfalls lay scattered on the grass around the twisted, lichen-encrusted trees. There was the scent of overripe fruit that was starting to decay and ferment, an oversweet, cloying, poignant fragrance that stirred something within me. I stood resting my hands on one of the crooked boughs and inhaled deeply, drinking in the mysterious tranquil stillness and peace of the ancient orchard.

Too soon I would be cooped up inside a dark and stuffy birthing room again. It would have been unbearable to me if it wasn’t for the prospect of holding another newborn baby in my arms, Richard’s second, which was more than enough recompense. I hoped this one would please him more.

I watched dreamily as two Red Admiral butterflies came sailing into the orchard and settled on one of the fallen fruits, their vivid orange-banded wings fanning slowly. I thought of James Petiver, wondered what he was doing now and if he still thought of me. I decided I’d bring little Dickon to the orchard and sit him down on the grass by the fallen fruit so he could have a close view of the butterflies. It was not too early to start teaching him all that James had taught me.

Still in a dream I watched as Alice Walker, the new little cookmaid, came in through the wooden gate with a basket on her arm and started bending to collect the fallen apples at her feet. I watched her place two in her basket and then stoop to pick up a third.

“Don’t,” I said, more harshly than I had intended. “Leave them be.”

“Leave the apples on the ground, Ma’am?” She looked at me with a frown. “But Cook needs them for baking. Mr. Glanville said there would be half a dozen extra for supper.”

It was the first I had heard of it, but Richard was forever inviting people to dine without informing me, either the most illustrious of the local gentry or a hard-drinking, hard-gambling set of young men from Bristol whose company he seemed to prefer to mine nowadays.

“Take the apples from the trees,” I said to Alice. As if to demonstrate, I plucked one from the branch and took a large bite into its juicy flesh.

I had thrown the girl into a complete quandary. “What is the matter now, Alice?”

“Cook specifically told me to collect the windfalls, Ma’am. She hates to see waste. It seems a shame to let the apples just rot.”

“Then take the best ones from the trees before they fall,” I said, mildly despairing of this mismanagement. “The rotten ones will not be wasted. There are some little creatures that like rotten fruit all the better. If the fruit is all gone they will not come.”

She bobbed a quick curtsy. “As you wish, Ma’am.” She put down her basket and started pulling apples indiscriminately off the tree nearest to where she stood, as if she wanted to be away before I made another alarming request. Her basket only half filled, she scurried away as if she couldn’t be gone from me quick enough.

I sighed, imagining what tall tale Alice would rush to take to Cook about the strange notions of their mistress. I took another bite of my apple, rested back against a tree and hoped they would put it down to my current condition.

THE MAID EVIDENTLY WHISPERED to more people than just Cook. We had a footman now, Jane Jennings’s son, Will. Resplendent in his new livery of blue and gold braid, he gave me a peculiar look when he served me at dinner, almost sympathetic, as if he felt sorry for me, as if I was ill. Yet his look was wary too, as if he was one of those who regarded insects as sinister creatures and an interest in them as somehow distasteful, if not dangerous. Richard hardly acknowledged me either, though I assumed that was at least in part due to the fact that he was so preoccupied with trying to impress our eminent guests, if they were not impressed enough already by the livery and by the great seven-branched candelabras that flickered above the sparkling silver plates and knives and spoons and the jugs of rich claret.

As well as George Digby and John Smythe, we were joined by Ferdinando Gorges of Wraxall.

At first the talk was all of William of Orange and an open letter that had been written by him to the people of England.

“There is no question that it is a subtle bid for kingship,” George Digby pronounced. “The man has been attempting to influence English politics for the whole of this past year. I’d not be at all surprised if he was massing an invasion force already.”

My hand went defensively to my womb. “Please tell me we are not about to be invaded again?”

“So long as Orange chooses not to march through Somersetshire in Monmouth’s trail.” John Smythe guffawed. “I have no stomach for getting embroiled in another affray. Bet you haven’t either, Glanville?”

As Richard reached for a hefty swig of his wine, I noted the tension in his jaw at this mention of the militia’s crushing defeat at the start of the Monmouth rebellion. “It would be different this time,” he said steadily.

“No doubt about that,” the Earl snorted. “If William of Orange does come to try to conquer the throne, he will bring a fleet to rival the Armada.”

The conversation turned to less serious matters, then to pure frivolity that I found very wearisome.

I nibbled at the rich feast of partridge and stuffed goose and puddings, not bothering to concentrate as the candles burned lower and the conversation became more rowdy and drunken. When Richard accidentally knocked over a bottle of fine wine and it spilled all over the gleaming new parquet floor we had barely paid for, he suggested everyone go through to the withdrawing room for cards, and I rose from the table with the excuse that I needed to rest.

“I can’t interest you in a game of whist?” George Digby asked blithely and with such immense charm that I was almost tempted.

“Save your breath, George,” my husband said meanly. “Eleanor does not care for card games. It is such a regular pursuit for a lady, and my wife is anything but regular.”

“You lucky devil.” Ferdinando Gorges guffawed.

But I knew Richard had not meant to pay me a compliment. I knew that the servants had run to him with their tales and that they had irritated him. If he had been more at ease with me, did not have this perplexing need to keep picking fights with me, I knew it would not have mattered to him at all. There was a time when he would have instantly defended me. He would have dismissed it with a shrug, or applauded it even, seeing it as part of the wildness and individuality he said he had first so loved in me. But because something had soured between us, he had not taken it that way. Had taken against me instead.

NEXT MORNING, as I was rising just after sunup, Richard swayed into the room. He sat down heavily on the edge of the bed, groaning and holding his head.

I was not very sympathetic. “You should have learned by now that too much of a good thing makes you sick.”

He dragged the drapes closed around the bed to shut out the pale morning light and he climbed under the covers without even taking off his clothes, pulling the heavy blankets up tightly around him. His face was ashen and his eyes bloodshot.

I scrambled back up onto the bed, gripped by fear, knowing in that instant that no matter our differences, he was dearer and more precious to me than ever. “What’s wrong, love? Are you not well?” I laid my hand on his forehead, terrified of what I would find, but his skin was quite cool.

He had closed his eyes and thrown one arm across them, as if the light still hurt him, dim as it was beneath the tester. “When I do die, it will be in a debtors’ jail.”

I looked at him, lying beneath the richly brocaded tester, under rich damask blankets that I had wanted almost as much as he had. “It can’t be that bad.”

“Nell, we have mortgages and debts owing to every wealthy merchant and gentleman who was supping here yesterday. I borrow from one to pay t’other and then hope to win some of it back off ’em at cards.”

“Did you win last night?” I asked in a small voice.

“No, sweetheart,” he said, deeply despondent, but in a way that made me realize he had totally forgotten our disagreement yesterday, or else considered it of no consequence now. “I lost. It seems that despite my best efforts, I always lose.”

Was it just anxiety over money that had been making him so irritable with me? If it was, then it was understandable. I was just glad he was sharing it with me now and strangely relieved to think that might be the extent of our problems, that it was not something else, something worse. Such as what? I did not want to think.

“We can sell the plate,” I suggested.

“That would barely pay for the repair of the guttering, let alone the crack that has appeared in the west wall of the hall and all the holes in the roof.”

“Sell my jewels, then. I don’t need them all.”

“And have everyone pity you for having a wastrel for a husband?”

“I don’t care what they think.”

“I am well aware of it.”

I did not rise to that. “We could drain the land,” I said. “William Merrick has always said it would bring a great fortune.”

He blinked open his eyes and stared at me hard. “You tried that before, remember? When you antagonized all the tenants and yeomen for miles around and they came to smoke you out.”

“So? We could try again.”

I had never seen him look so afraid. “And what if we failed, Nell? Like they did at first in the Fens? What if this land cannot be reclaimed? We waste a fortune instead of making one. Lose all respect and goodwill. We lose everything.” He clung to the damask cover as if he feared it was about to be dragged off him. “What does any of it matter anyway? You heard what Digby said last night. The country is on the brink of revolution again. If the King does not abdicate the throne, then William of Orange may demand his head. There could be another civil war. We could lose this house to the victors if not the creditors, just as my father lost his.”

I crept back under the covers and took him in my arms. He smelt of sweat and stale wine but I stroked back his thick black curls and pressed my mouth against his forehead. “You have me,” I said. “Come revolution or ruin, whatever happens, whatever else we lose, we shall have each other. That is all that matters.”

He settled himself against me and eventually he went to sleep. I drew the blanket over him as if he was a little boy and stayed with him until he woke. It was almost dusk when I went to fetch him a thick slice of bacon and some bread, and a glass of fresh milk to soothe his stomach.

“I am not an invalid,” he snapped ungratefully, pushing the tray away and throwing back the covers. “Nor am I quite a peasant yet. I don’t want to sup on bread and bacon like some poor farmer. I want canary wine and a supper of at least four dishes.”

I understood that where once he had been willing to let me witness his vulnerability and his fear, he resented me now for having seen it, almost as if our current predicament was somehow my fault.

I TRIED TO FORGET all about debts and mortgages, cosseted from the real world by the preparations for my lying-in. The gossips assembled round my candlelit bed with their chatter and their needlework and their comfits and it was just as companionable as the first time I had given birth. There was Mistress Knight, Mistress Keene, Florence Smythe and Mistress Gorges, Jane Jennings, Mistress Walker from the mill, John Hort’s wife, Lucy, with her new baby son in her arms. These women, many of whom I had known all my life, were still my friends. They had seen two of my three babies born and they wished me well with my fourth. They were still at ease in my company. Until my pains grew so bad and I cried out so loud that Florence Smythe, newly delivered of a daughter herself, reached for the King James Bible that I had left beside my bed.