Lady of the Butterflies (61 page)

Dickon suddenly turned and sprinted back to the house. I ran after him to the nursery, where he began collecting up all the animals currently residing there, namely two chickens, a piglet, a toad, a pike and the swan. Together we carried them outside and set them free in a wild flurry of wings and feathers. I took the bucket and tipped the toad and the pike into Monk’s Pool and Dickon came back with Cadbury at his heels.

I helped him heft her into the coach.

“You know I cannot come with you while my mother is still ill,” Bess told me as I lifted my skirts and put my foot on the first step.

“I understand.”

“Where shall I tell him that you have gone?”

“Say that you do not know.”

“He is sure to guess.”

“No matter, so long as I am not here.” Here, I might have added, where thanks to our brother few were likely to question my husband too closely if he said I was not fit to manage my affairs, that I must be locked up.

The coach lurched into motion. So afraid was I of Richard waking to find us gone and coming in pursuit of us that I shouted up to the coachman to go faster. For the first few miles he drove the horses on through the night with a flailing whip. But after we had, of necessity, slowed to a steadier roll, Dickon gave me a little tug to tell me that he wanted to say something to me privately. He had not spoken one word to me since I had woken him and bundled him into the coach, but I had caught him glancing worriedly at my cut lip. He sensed my fear in a way the girls had not, knew this was no adventure. I lowered my head so he could whisper.

“Mama, are we running away from my father?”

It sounded such a despairing thing to do, I would not admit to it. And somehow it did not feel true. It did not feel as if we were running from anything, but toward it.

I turned to look down at the little head of his sleeping sister, curled in my other arm, and over to Mary, who was gazing out of the window at the blue dawn-lit fields. “No, darling,” I said to my youngest son. “We are not running away. Look. See where the sky is turning pink. That is where we are going. We are traveling east. We are following the sun.”

“We will come back?”

“Oh, yes,” I said. “We will come back. As soon as I have worked out what to do.”

I heard my father’s voice once again . . . .
Never forget that you carry the stain of Eve’s sins upon your soul. . . . Never forget that Eden was lost to her because of that sin.

Tickenham was my home, it was mine and my children’s, and I would never let Richard or anyone else take it from me.

I HAD NOT EXPECTED Aldersgate Street to be so grand. It was very long and spacious, lined with innumerable inns and taverns, interspersed amongst mansions fit for dukes and marquesses.

I had left all three children at Mary Burges’s table, eating pottage and pudding, and I was glad that I had at least taken the time to change into a gown of rose silk and creamy lace, and had tidied my hair and dabbed rose water on my wrists and throat.

A bell tinkled in the shop as I opened the door on a room like none I had ever seen before, a strange, eccentric, wonderful room. There was a grand carved fireplace and oak floor and oak wainscot paneling. The far wall was lined with tiny drawers and shelves full of beautiful glazed apothecary jars and pill slabs. There was a dish filled with dried vipers, and a crocodile skin hung from the ceiling. Even the air was different, heavy with the exotic, pungent scent of herbs.

James was serving a customer from behind a wide oak counter, his corn-blond hair tied back, sleeves rolled up and a pestle and mortar at his elbow. He did not see me when I entered, too busy measuring powder on brass scales. “Angelica can be used to treat any epidemic diseases, though pray you have no use for it on your voyage, Robert,” he said as he handed over a sachet in exchange for coins. He made notes in a ledger. Then he looked up, saw me, and his quill stopped in midair. For a moment he looked at me so oddly that I half thought he did not know who I was. Until he smiled.

I smiled back, gestured with my hand. “Please, do not neglect your customer on my behalf.”

James tore his eyes away, back to the man at the counter, as if he feared I might disappear while he was otherwise engaged. “Robert, this is Eleanor Glanville,” he said. “She will be as interested as I am in the specimens you send back from the Americas. Mistress Glanville,” he said to me, “meet Robert Rutherford, ship’s surgeon.”

Mr. Rutherford bowed.

“That is everything, I think, Robert,” James said. “Except for something to help rid you of the tetters, which I can see is still troubling you.”

The surgeon touched the back of his hand where the skin was red and flaky. “Oh, I’m resigned to living with the itch now,” he said.

“Well, you shouldn’t have to be. Try some bryony. Its leaves are good for cleansing all sores and the powder of the dried root cleanses the skin.” James handed over another sachet. “Take both, with my compliments.”

Mr. Rutherford added them to his chest. “You are a generous man, Mr. Petiver. I am much obliged to you, much obliged indeed.”

“As I am to you.” James opened a drawer behind the counter, handed over a thermometer and some quires of brown paper. “For the plants. And here’s a fresh collecting book. You have a net and bottles?”

“I do, and the printed instructions for preserving specimens which you gave to me the last time. Don’t worry, sir, I know what to do now.” Rutherford grinned. “I will be sure on this voyage to look in the stomachs of sharks for strange animals as I was unable to do last time. It’ll be as if you’ve been to South Carolina and Massachusetts Bay yourself when you see all that I’ll bring back for you.”

“I wish you a very speedy return, then,” James said, as the surgeon headed for the door. “But above all a safe one.”

“Aye, I heard how your collectors keep dying off, done in by natives and mysterious diseases or lost at sea. Don’t worry, I’ll not fail you. I will be back.”

“When do you sail?”

“Next Thursday with the tide, wind permitting. Good day to you, Mr. Petiver.” He gave a nod to me as he passed me on his way out. “Good day to you too, Mistress Glanville.”

James came around to the other side of the counter and took my hands. “You have come back at last. Why has it taken you so long?”

“I honestly don’t know.”

I looked for changes in him, but found none to speak of. Not even a hint of gray in his fair hair. He was just the same, lithesome and slight, with eyes that radiated warmth and boundless enthusiasm and intelligence, and were flecked with all of nature’s colors. I could not even see any lines around them.

“I had not imagined your shop would be quite so extraordinary and grand,” I said. “Even though I know you are a member of the Royal Society and a respected man of medicine now.”

He stood back to look at me. “You are grand and extraordinary enough yourself.” He smiled generously. “I still do not even pretend to follow fashion, but I know enough to recognize a very fine gown and cloak when I see one.” He touched my arm, seeing that my eyes were not half as bright as my clothes, even after a little flattery. “We cannot talk properly here,” he said. “I’ll close the shop and we’ll go to the tavern and you can tell me how everything is with you.”

We walked up Aldersgate Street toward St. Botolph’s Church and the city gate. We passed numerous taverns on the way but James led me to the Bell Inn, a respectable establishment with wagons drawn up outside. Within it was full of gentlemen travelers, smoking clay pipes and eating oysters, beneath the low sloping ceiling. We took our pots of ale and found a quiet corner where a mongrel was curled by the fire.

“You have achieved all you set out to achieve,” I said, after he’d drawn up a stool opposite mine.

“Oh, there is always more to do, more to discover. I will never have the time to finish even a fraction of all I want to do, if I live to be seventy.”

He could well live to such a great age. He looked so full of life and vigor still.

“What has made you come back to London now, Eleanor? After all this time?”

I looked down at my hands, lightly folded in my lap, and I did not know where to begin.

He touched the cut on my lip, almost healed after four days’ traveling, but still visible. “He has hurt you?”

“He did,” I admitted. “But only once. And not badly. It is his right, after all,” I added bitterly. “As my husband he has every authority, over my body and my conduct. If he wished to beat me, no law in the country would come to my defense. But I could bear a beating. It is not that. He says that I am mad.”

Silence fell briefly. “It is not the first time you’ve had that accusation made against you, is it?” James said at length. “I have suffered it too, as has anyone who collects butterflies. Just last week I had a letter from a sea captain who was collecting for me in Spain when he was set upon by locals. They accused him of sorcery and of necromancy, of chasing butterflies in an attempt to commune with the spirits of the dead.”

I was shocked. “Surely, nobody really believed he was a necromancer?”

“I am afraid that the Age of Reason has not reached some parts of Spain.”

“Just as it has not reached some parts of England.” I clutched my pot of ale. “I came to London because I am afraid of what Richard will try to do. I am afraid that he means to have me locked up so he can take possession of my estate. As my wedded husband, he could do that, couldn’t he? He could lock me up and seize everything. That is what they do to the insane, isn’t it?”

“It happens,” James said bluntly, and I was so grateful to him for not trying to belittle my fears. “But he would have to bring lunacy proceedings against you before he would be allowed to keep you under any restraint. He would have to petition the Lord Chancellor and convince a jury that you were incapable of managing yourself or your estate.”

“There are enough people who would support his claim.” I put down my pot and fingered the cascades of lace at the sleeves of my gown. “James, you must have been to see the lunatics in the new Bedlam?” I whispered the question with a morbid fascination. “Is it as terrible as they say? Are they filthy and naked and ranting, left to rattle their shackles and starve in cells that are stinking and damp and always dark?”

“Nobody is going to send you to Bedlam,” he said quietly. “Nor anywhere like it. The asylums are for the poor.” He gave a half-smile. “Those who are wealthy and insane are committed to the care of a physician, and if they are confined, it is in a warm and comfortable room in their own country mansion. But Eleanor, you are not mad,” he reassured me. “You are exuberant and enthusiastic. You are passionate and you are obsessive. To many that may look very like madness, but you are probably the sanest person I have ever met.”

“You do not subscribe, then, to the notion that there are demons which prey on obsession and passion?”

“I believe that is a most convenient deterrent, put about to discourage obsession and passion, which I think is a very great pity and makes the world a far poorer place.”

I smiled at that. “You are a wonderful person.”

“Coming from you, that is the highest praise.”

“You do not believe that all women are creatures of weak reason either?”

He let his hands fall from mine. “I cannot speak for all women. I have known too few of them, and those whom I have known I have known too vaguely. I have always been too busy.”

“That sounds a lame excuse.”

“Does it? Perhaps it is. I admit I have little faith in the state of matrimony. It does not seem to bring many people contentment. You yourself have tried it twice and it seems to me that both have led to great sorrow and pain, of one sort or another.”

“If I had not married, I would not have my children,” I said. “If I had not married Richard, I would not have little Ellen, who is as exquisite as a doll, and Dickon, who is so clever and kind it humbles me.” I smiled. “Oh, James, you should see how he turned the house into an ark with all the wounded creatures he takes in. He has a talent for healing them. But I worry for him. He is so sensitive. He has never really got along with his father. I shall have to go back to Tickenham, to face Richard’s accusations, but I do not want Dickon there with me.”

“How old is he?”

“Nine.”

“Is he tall? Would he pass for a couple of years older?”

“In manner, most definitely.”

“Then bring him to me and I will take him as my apprentice.”

Instantly I saw that it was a perfect solution. Since the Glanville family seat at Elmsett was ruined and there were no funds to repair it, Dickon would have to make his own way in the world. He would need a profession, and medicine would suit him more than most. I could not wish for a better master to tutor him.

“Don’t worry.” James smiled. “I will not make him bed down under the counter, like the usual sort of apprentice. He will have his own dormitory and eat his meals at my table.” His eyes held mine with rare tenderness. “I promise to care for him as if he was my own son.”

“Thank you, James.”

“It is you who is doing me the greater service,” he said with his usual generosity. “I need help with my work, and I know any son of yours will be honest and quick to learn and very charming company with it.”