Lady of the Butterflies (41 page)

We started walking again. “Do you honestly think so?”

“Any one of those gentlemen in that coffeehouse would think so. Any of the great scientists of the Royal Society itself would think so. Scientists living hundreds of years from now will think so. Rarities can never be conserved unless people like you discover as much as you can about them.” We carried on in silence for a while.

When he resumed talking, James told me, “Hans has a vision of building a great institution, bigger than Tradescant’s Ark, like a giant curio cabinet, housed in its own building, where thousands of artifacts and specimens can be displayed for all to see and study. He’s always telling me that he envisions my collections forming the bedrock of the insect cabinets. Think what it would be like to contribute to that great and lasting collection—the greatest natural history collection in Britain. There’s no reason why yours could not be a part of it, too.”

“That would be an amazing honor,” I conceded. “But I honestly didn’t start collecting butterflies with any mind to fame or immortality or even to science. I read that Christopher Wren and Isaac Newton were inspired to be involved in science and mathematics by the sight of a comet. For me it was the beauty and color of a golden butterfly.”

“There’s nothing wrong with being first drawn to something because you think it very beautiful,” James said quietly. “So long as you take the time to find out and appreciate its other virtues.”

“You forget the tulip fanciers who ransomed their fortunes and ruined themselves, all for the transitory beauty of a rare flower,” I said.

“Perhaps it was worth it,” James said. “The ancients went so far as to worship butterflies for their beauty. They believed that the fire goddess followed young warriors onto the battlefield and made love to them, holding a butterfly between her lips.”

Coming from any other man, it would have sounded like an overt flirtation, but James always seemed to be above that, his thoughts moving on the permanently higher plane of science and ideas. Our discussions had ranged over such arcane and wonderful topics in the past that we could speak of almost anything with complete ease. But when we had reached the door of the Burgeses’ house, I could not help but feel relieved that our conversation had reached a natural end.

“Would you like a cup of milk before you set off back?” I didn’t wait for James to answer but went straight to the jug on the table. I could hear Mary soothing one of the little ones who’d woken up, and John was no doubt in his closet, saying his prayers. I took off my hat and let down my hair, thinking how it would give my kind hosts the fright of their lives if they found a strange boy in their kitchen. Not that they would be unshocked to see me with my hair cascading over a waistcoat, all the way down to a pair of brown breeches! I was about to pour the milk when I saw a letter, propped against the jug and addressed to me.

“The writing’s much tidier than mine,” James said, peeping over my shoulder.

It was indeed precise, spare and bold. William Merrick’s writing. I unfolded it and read. It was a short letter, but it took a disproportionately long time for me to take in the contents.

“Is everything all right, Eleanor?” James touched my arm.

I looked up at him. “I have to return to Tickenham immediately. There’s been a flood, an early flood. The rivers have burst their banks. They didn’t get the cows off the moor in time and many have drowned. A boy from the village was washed away and lost his life trying to save them . . . trying to save his family’s livelihood.”

James looked down at the letter, as if he would read much more than was contained within it. “Tell me about your home, about the moor. I have traveled so little, I don’t even know exactly where it is.”

I refolded the letter, tossed my hair over my shoulder and finished pouring the milk. I handed him the cup and leaned back with my hands against the table. “It lies to the north of the Mendip hills, near to the coast and the Bristol Channel. In summer the land is so fertile it produces the best cattle in all of England. But in winter it is wet and marshy. We call it the moor but it’s really a low-lying expanse of peat, threaded with rivers. We are used to a regular onset of great autumn and winter floods that sweep in during October or November and remain until January, sometimes returning throughout February and March and early spring. You’d think it a strange spectacle to see people striding on stilts through the water, or a congregation forced to come to church in boats and carry their dead across the water to bury them. But that is life for us, has been life for us for generations.” I smiled. “I’m sorry. I’m sure you didn’t want to know all that.”

“You speak about it as if you love it very much.”

“In summer there is nowhere I would rather be, and even the floods bring their own mystery and magic.”

He drank some of the milk and waited for me to go on.

“The people of Somersetshire have waged a war against water for centuries,” I said. “I grew up hearing stories of the disastrous flood of the year sixteen hundred and seven, when a high tide met with land floods so violent that they overwhelmed everything built to withstand their force. Walls and banks were eaten through and the moor was inundated to a depth of twelve feet. The floodwaters were littered with pieces of bobbing timber and the floating corpses of dead cattle and goats. Whole villages were sunk right up to the tops of the trees, so it appeared as if they’d been built at the bottom of the sea.”

James was listening with rapt attention, as if I was weaving a fantastical story.

“So you see, we are used to floods,” I said. “But nobody expects them in September. Nobody is ready for them.”

“Isn’t it too late now? What can you do? Why must you go back?”

“I am their squire now. I do not know if I shall make a very good one, but I am all they have. These people are my family, James. The women kept me company when I was having my first baby. They will look to me.”

“But what can you do?”

I threw up my hands with a small shrug. “Have the kitchen cook up a vat of broth. Send out laborers and carts to mend any breach in the seawall. Take a bucket and start bailing. I shall not know where I am most needed until I am there.”

“Tickenham is blessed to have you.” He plopped my hat back on top of my curls. “You will make a most able little squire, I think.”

“I hope so. I shall do my very best.”

He handed the cup of milk to me, brought out his flask and poured a dash of whiskey into it. “If you are going to go, I shall have to give you your gift now.”

“My gift?”

He smiled. “I do know how you like gifts. I was saving it for New Year, but you must take it home with you now.” He hunted around in the pot cupboard. “Mary has been keeping it safe for me. Now, where might she have hidden it?” He moved onto the settle, opened up the seat and peered inside. “Ah, here it is.”

I’d been expecting more butterfly wings, but instead he produced a large and intriguing wooden box. “James, whatever is it?”

He placed it in front of me on the table and stood back. “Open it and see.”

I took off the lid and brought it out, recognizing immediately what it was from the pictures I’d gazed at in the book my father had burned, fearing it might carry the plague to us. I lifted it out and set it on the table, a heavy instrument with polished brass knobs and glass lenses and dials. “A microscope.” I looked at James, but I couldn’t see him all that well, since my eyes were blurred with tears. “I’ve wanted one for years.”

He looked so happy, as if it was he who’d been given the most wonderful gift, not me. “It’s from Christopher Cock’s workshop in Long Acre,” he said. “One of the best instrument makers. By royal appointment.”

I put my eye against the eyepiece.

“You really need a lamp globe to help illuminate specimens properly. I was planning to bring mine over here for you to try, but you’ll work out how to get a satisfactory image using sunlight.”

“I don’t know what to say. How to thank you.” I looked at him, suddenly distraught. “But James, I don’t have anything to give you in return.”

“Yes you do,” he said. “You can give me a promise never again to say your work has no merit.” He took my hand in his, as if binding me to a pledge. “Promise me that you will never, ever give up your love of butterflies, and that is all the thanks I shall ever need.”

I saw the earnestness behind his smile. It was as if he was asking me to remain faithful to our friendship, since butterflies had always been the link between us.

“I swear it.”

“I will teach you how to use the microscope properly,” he said, “just as soon as you return to London.”

I DIDN’T GO UP to bed when James left. I placed a candle as near to the microscope as I dared. It had been sold with some prepared glass slides and I slipped one under the lens, peered down the eyepiece at it, but saw nothing at all. I needed James to show me how to use it. I needed him to help me see with clarity. Maybe I would come back to London soon, but for now the summer was over. Despite repeated adjustments to the knobs and dials, all I could see before me was darkness.

Part Three

Autumn

1684

FOUR YEARS LATER

F
orest and little Mary were playing with a litter of kittens by the stone fireplace in the great hall when I told them we were expecting a guest.

Mary jumped up and clapped her hands. “Who?” she asked eagerly.

I couldn’t answer her. It was too strange, as if time had reeled backward. Sitting beside my daughter, I saw a ghost child in a starched white cap and dark wool dress. I heard my father tell me we were expecting guests. I saw myself jump up and clap my hands and ask who it was, just as little Mary had done.

“William Merrick,” I said, like an echo from that other time.

I saw little Mary’s excitement drain out of her as she turned her attention back to the kittens. She didn’t particularly like Mr. Merrick, just as I had not liked him.

Still, I had anticipated his visit so eagerly that day years ago, because I was curious to meet the gentleman who was to come with him. A gentleman from Suffolk. I had looked forward to meeting him, not knowing that he was to be my husband, the father of my children, the friend of the man I had loved beyond any other.

For all that had happened to me in between, England, and especially the West Country, had not changed so very much. It was not even a safer, more secure place for my children than it had been for me as a child. We had beheaded one king then, and now here we were, a good few years on, and there had been several attempts and rumors of attempts to assassinate the new restored one. It seemed that lessons were not so easily learned, that mistakes were made only to be repeated.

The country was rife with rumors of uprisings and plots to seize London and conspiracies to destroy the monarchy. The King’s dashing illegitimate son, the Duke of Monmouth, claimed to be the rightful heir to the throne and had attempted to displace his named successor, James, King Charles’s brother. The Duke had proved his popular following with a progress through our own county, through Ilchester and Bath, where the children and I had gone for the waters and been caught up amongst the thousands who were there to greet him and strew his way with herbs and flowers. The handbills and broadsheets now claimed he was at the head of the plot to kill his father and had fled to Holland, with a five-hundred-pound price on his head, but everyone knew it was only a matter of time before he would return to the West Country and amass an army of supporters.

At least my son was too young to join them, I thought with relief, though he would leap at any excuse for a fight and harried me at every turn. Right now he was mercilessly pulling a kitten’s tail. She had, with good reason, turned on him with a little hiss and bared her tiny pointed teeth.

“Oh, don’t tease her, Forest,” I said. “You are so cruel sometimes.”

He stuck his lip out sullenly. “You kill butterflies.”

“So that I can study them.” That subtle difference was no doubt entirely lost on a seven-year-old. He was, in all honesty, probably learning something about nature by pulling a kitten’s tail and watching to see how it responded. “Don’t be impertinent,” I ended halfheartedly, with too much on my mind to start another battle with him.

“Don’t be angry with Forest,” Mary said sweetly, defending her brother, automatically siding with him against me, as was the way with brothers and sisters. She never saw bad in anyone, was as placid and good as she had looked from the moment she was born.

In that respect at least, this situation was very different from that other day so many years ago. I had no need to echo my father and tell my own daughter to tidy her hair and clean her hands before our guests arrived, so that she looked like a little lady, not a vagabond. She was only four years old, but bless her, she always looked and behaved like a perfect little lady, and was well loved for it by everyone.

She stuffed her hand in the pocket fastened around her waist and produced a sugared almond, which she immediately offered to her brother.

“Where did you get that?” I smiled at her. “As if I couldn’t guess.”

“From Cook.”

Mistress Keene was forever slipping her tidbits and treats from the kitchen. “She spoils you.” All the servants did. They adored Mary. Would do anything for her. Not that I could blame them at all. I had thought we would be the same, she and I, but we were not. She resembled Edmund physically, with her red hair and freckles, but also in her personality. She was her father in every way, a girl who would be perfectly content with marriage to a man just like him, would look for nothing more than a quiet life of domesticity. In one part of me I was intensely glad for her, but I could not help feeling a little sorry too. Mary would be spared the pain, but she would miss out on the passion.

“Can we go outside?” Forest challenged, in a tone I recognized as far more like my own.

“You may go once you have greeted our visitor, so long as you promise to stay in the garden.”

“You never let us do what we want,” Forest exploded, scowling at me and stamping his feet in a fit of childish rage.

Swift and direct as an archer’s arrow, he had found my most vulnerable point. He knew very well that the one thing I wanted for my children was for them to be as unconstrained and free as it was possible to be. “That is not true, Forest, and well you know it.”

Further argument between us was prevented by a knock at the door. “That must be Mr. Merrick.” Or William, as he insisted I now call him.

Mary stood demurely to receive our visitor, but as soon as Bess had admitted him into the great hall and he had bowed and kissed my hand, Forest slunk straight for the door, head down in a sulk.

William was not impressed and caught him by his shoulders, but Forest threw him off so roughly that if he’d been a year or two older and stronger, he’d have run the risk of unseating our guest’s expensive new periwig. The thought of which made me smile to myself. Was it any wonder my son was such a little insurgent?

“I told him he could go, William,” I said, irritated at the interference. “Rather now through the door, than out of a window at dead of night.”

William’s square jaw had slackened into jowls with age, but he was as loud and bombastic as ever. “You are far too lenient with the little jackanapes. He’ll become completely ungovernable.”

“He is only seven. And I like his spirit.”

“No good will come of spoiling that child, I tell you.”

I managed to hold my tongue. No good would come of me reminding William Merrick that he wasn’t my guardian anymore, had no jurisdiction anymore over how I chose to run my household and my family. Nobody had any jurisdiction over me now. I had discovered that there was some small consolation to being a widow. To have a husband and see him die, to sleep alone and unloved in a cold bed every night for the rest of her life, was one way for a woman to be completely free. The only way for a woman to be completely free. I had nobody to hold me, nobody to kiss me and caress me, nobody to share my life with, but I was at last masterless. None in the world could call me to account, and I liked that very much.

I told Mary she might go back to the kittens once she had asked Bess to bring us some coffee.

“You’ve a biddable little girl there,” William conceded. “But young Forest needs a man in his life to restore some discipline.”

“If there was a man in his life to discipline him, I’d have to be obedient to that man too.” I smiled wryly. “No, thank you.”

“You’ve had no more offers?”

“I’m a wealthy widow. Naturally I have had offers.”

“From Richard Glanville again?”

Just to hear his name caused an ache of loss and of emptiness in my heart. “From him.”

There had been other suitors besides Richard, fortune hunters one and all. I barely even recalled their names, and if I had not seen them off by subtly refusing every one of their oft-repeated invitations, they soon abandoned their quest when I told them in no uncertain terms that I had no wish to wed ever again. Only Richard had not given up. He had tried to see me more than a half-dozen times since Edmund’s death. Once every six months or so he rode to Tickenham unannounced, as he had that Valentine’s morning. But each time I had told Bess to send him away. I refused to speak to him. I turned him away from my door, when he’d ridden for days to see me, without even offering him the common courtesy I’d show to a beggar. I didn’t trust myself to let him in, even to offer him some bread and cheese and ale to refresh him after the long ride before I sent him on his way again.

“I thought as much,” William said with some mirth. “I ran into him again last week, drowning his sorrows in a bottle of rum at a dockside inn.”

I felt the prick of tears behind my eyes. I did not want to know. And yet I did. Oh, I did. “You spoke to him?”

“He spoke to me. Begged me to tell him when last I had seen you. If you were well, if there were any other gentlemen paying you any attention. I tell you, I pitied the poor, lovesick lad. But you’ve got to give him credit, he’s mightily tenacious. I guarantee he’ll be back.”

I did not doubt it. But it would make no difference how many times he came. I would not see him. No matter how much my body burned for him and my heart pined just to hear his voice, to see his face, to touch him. This was my punishment, my penance. And it was the price I paid for my freedom. If you could call it freedom, when I was bound by the spiraling costs of this waterlogged land and with maintaining this ancient, crumbling house, bound by obligation to tenants and servants, by the constant nagging fear that my children might fall ill or drown.

“He’d not make such a bad husband, you know,” William said. “Richard Glanville. Nor such a bad lord for Tickenham.”

I found myself wondering then if my former guardian had helped Richard to drown his sorrows in that Bristol inn, and just what the two of them had found to talk about besides me. As if I could not guess. “With his dying breath, my father warned me to be on my guard against unscrupulous Cavaliers,” I said viciously.

“But your father, my dear, could sometimes be a terrible bigot.”

“I will not hear him spoken of that way, sir. Do you hear me?”

“You disagree with me?”

“I do not wish to discuss my father. And I especially do not wish to discuss Richard Glanville. Not now. Not ever.”

He gave a noncommittal shrug. “As you wish.”

“All Forest needs is to be able to go outside to play and tire himself,” I said, changing the subject back. “All he wants to do is fly kites and climb trees and kick his ball about on the moor. And soon it will be safe for him to do all that, won’t it? Soon no more boys will lose their lives trying to save drowning cows. Soon there will be no more floods. That is, after all, why you are here.”

“Indeed.”

“I trust you have more to report this time than the last.”

“I am pleased to inform you that the necessary permissions have at long last been granted, an engineer has almost been appointed, and two hundred pounds allotted to commence work. I have every confidence that a date will soon be set for the summer. My, how long we’ll have waited for such a day!”

To me it felt like a lifetime. I could not help but remember how I had been cajoled into agreeing to this scheme, so that Edmund might solicit my hand, and now, before the first sod had even been dug, I was a widow of four years’ standing.

I WOKE IN THE DARKNESS to the unmistakable and haunting call of a wedge of swans arriving to spend winter on the wetlands. As well as their eerie honking, I swore I could hear the beating of many great white wings.

I waited until dawn and then went to rouse Forest and Mary from their beds.

“The swans are here,” I whispered into their intricate little ears. “Come and see them.”

Together we stood by the window in my chamber, a child on either side of me, my arms draped around their shoulders, as we gazed out over the dawn-lit flooded moor, empty yesterday save for the mallards and a few geese, but now miraculously thronged with hundreds, almost thousands it seemed, of our serene white winter visitors.

I was not too absorbed by the magic and mystery of their appearance to miss the exchange of glances ’twixt my son and daughter, which resulted in Mary’s putting forth a request. “Could we take the boat out to see them up close?” she asked tentatively.

“All right.” I acquiesced, thinking how there might be few chances left. “So long as you both wrap up warm.”

They scampered off gleefully and Mary came back minutes later, carrying cloak, bonnet and muff. Forest had put on his thick riding coat and boots. Mary took hold of my hand and Forest’s and we walked linked together.

Forest wanted to row the boat and I watched him proudly as he pulled on the oars with enough might to propel our little vessel between the majestic gliding birds.

“Beautiful, aren’t they?” I said, wrapping my cloak tighter around me.

Forest’s face was a picture of indifference, no sign of wonder or love for this land etched there at all, despite my best and continued efforts to instill such feelings in him.