Lady of the Butterflies (65 page)

I let out a ripple of laughter.

“How long have you known?” James exclaimed.

“Since you never mentioned your butterfly boy again, but spoke instead, constantly, of your Lady of the Butterflies.”

“Ah.” James busied himself opening up the portmanteau and handed the trays to John Ray while his girls crowded round to watch.

Seeing how poor Mr. Ray was obviously racked with pain from the sores on his legs, I helped him shift books off the comfortable but threadbare chairs, so they could all sit down by the crackling fire. All the books were marked with soot from the chimney and ink stains from the children, but their father made no apology for that fact.

“You have Eleanor to thank for the cataloguing,” James said, as John Ray’s eyes lingered on a tray of blues. “It is all her work.”

“Excellent work it is too.” He asked his eldest daughter to take the trays to his study and bring back his manuscript.

“Insects are so numerous and the observation of all kinds of them so difficult, I think I must give the task over to more able and younger persons. But the chapter on Papilos I will endeavor to continue, if I manage to live through the winter.” He handed the sheets over to James. “Please pardon my scribbling. Some days I can scarce manage a pen.”

Even so, the writing was elegant and flowing, and it pleased me to see that the lists of butterflies were catalogued after the fashion I had adopted, but had descriptions not just of the imagos but of their caterpillars and pupae too. James’s name appeared many times, and I felt a surge of pride to see it, as much as if it was my own name.
Butterfly blue. Mr. Petiver found in garden near Enfield. Mr. Petiver thinks it a different sex rather than species
.

Margaret Ray brought wine, and despite his pain, her husband demonstrated his phenomenal memory as he talked about his completed books: on fishes, birds, plants, flowers, the wisdom of God. He spoke fondly of a recent visit by Dr. David Krieg, who had stayed two days and made several exceedingly good drawings. He spoke most lovingly of how, now that his legs had failed him, his four young daughters went out with their nets at dusk, to collect nocturnals to bring to him.

When it was almost time to go, James presented John with the parcels of sugar and tobacco and a bottle of canary wine we had brought for him. “With my very best wishes,” James said.

“You are too generous, James. Thank you. But you do not need to bring gifts. You should know that your company and your collections are ample enough.”

“I’ll take these to Margaret, then,” James said amiably. “She has the common sense to be appreciative.”

James went off to the kitchen, two of the girls skipping after him.

“I have a dread of loneliness,” John said to me candidly, scooping one of his daughters up onto his lap, trying not to grimace at the pain it clearly caused him. “I find it hard to understand why any man would choose to live alone. But I gave up urging James to find himself a wife long ago. I knew there was some secret lady who was preventing him from forming any other attachment.”

I stared at him.

“Come, you must know, surely?”

“Sir, are you saying that James . . . ?”

“That he loves you, my dear, always has, for as long as I’ve had the pleasure of his acquaintance, and I suspect always will.”

“He has never really given me any indication.”

“That is not his way, is it? He seeks to make others happy, rather than be happy himself. He is the most selfless man I’ve ever met, doles out friendship and love, and all he asks in return is . . . well, butterflies and beetles.” A wry grin. “You are from Somersetshire, aren’t you? I had the privilege of making a tour of that spectacular county, in the year after the Great Fire, and of hunting out the little white pointed leaves of the water parsnip. I do so regret no longer being able to go out in the field to collect flora and fauna. But James told me in his last letter that you are as interested in breeding butterflies as in collecting them. Tell me, did the hints I passed on prove successful? Have you hatched a pupa yet?”

“Not quite yet. But it looks promising. Forgive me. I did not know you had a hand in it.”

“Well, well. I am glad to see that James isn’t always quite so self-effacing. That just once in a while, he is capable of a little ruse, in order to impress a lass.”

Did he want to impress me? Did he really?

“You have bred butterflies too, then?” I asked.

“My chief concern has always been to reinterpret the Christian faith in the light of a sound knowledge of nature. Understanding transformation is a matter of the greatest importance. To study just the imago is to study but half a life. Now, did you come up against the disturbing problem of false metamorphosis, when you hatched a fly instead of a butterfly?”

“Yes!” I exclaimed. “The first time. That is exactly what happened.”

“Ah,” he said, turning grave. “It has blighted the hopes of all us breeders at one point or another, but we are still not much closer to knowing quite how, or why. I truly believe we are on the brink of discounting the theory of spontaneous generation, but that is the final prop, still taken by some as proof enough that lice can be created by dirty hair and an old shawl be the originator of a moth, which in my personal opinion is bunkum, used to erroneously diminish God’s power and undermine our faith in Him.”

“It never undermined your faith, sir?”

“Have you ever dissected a pupa?”

“I could never bear to waste one.”

“It is no waste. The intermediate state between caterpillar and butterfly is a formless broth. Only a divine creator could organize that broth into a new creature. Only a divine creator, and one with an artistic flair, I might add, could design wings of such perfect symmetry and diversity and beauty. We’ll debunk spontaneous generation one of these days. We’ll prove that life comes from God, not matter, if only we have enough young naturalists, like you and James, with a love of insects.”

Margaret Ray sent us back to London with fresh bread and homemade cheese, in a parcel twice as large as the ones we had given to her.

“You see,” James said to me, when we dismounted under an old oak tree to eat our picnic amidst a carpet of gold and crimson leaves. “There is a gentleman who is proof, if ever you or anyone else needed it, that devotion to natural history is a sign of learning and piety, rather than of insanity.”

“Oh, but our circumstances are so very different, James.” I fingered a piece of bread. “John Ray has published books that more than compensate for the strangeness of what he does. They have brought him respect. I am not respected in Tickenham. Here, in London, when I am with you, with John Ray or Hans Sloane, I am an entomologist, a natural philosopher, an experimenter. But in Somersetshire, I am no different from your collector in Spain, alone with my net and my love of shape-changing insects that are commonly believed to represent the souls of the dead. I am a witch, a madwoman, a sorceress. A necromancer.”

James held my eyes, as a sudden squall of wind shook the tree and sent a flurry of golden leaves floating down on our heads. “So leave Somersetshire for good,” he said simply.

I half expected him to finish by suggesting I stay in London, with him, but he did not.

JAMES HAD BROUGHT BREAD to toast on a fork in the brazier in the herbarium and had skewered the first slice. There was a nip in the dusky air and we had both huddled close to the heat, our toes touching. He leaned forward to put his bread in the fire and I leaned forward too, my elbows on my knees and my chin propped in my hands, to watch the bread slowly browning and crisping. He turned to me in the flickering firelight and our lips were so close we could have kissed, but he made no attempt to kiss me.

He handed me my toast and I crunched a corner. “How long do we carry on?” It had gone on for days, one week that had stretched into two, now nearly to three.

“You have had enough already?”

I would never have enough. I did not want this time to end, but I knew James would never be the one to suggest we give up and one of us had to, sooner or later. “That is their mausoleum, I think?” I gestured at the leaf tent, willing him to contradict me. “These worms not only build their own gilded coffins but they build a whole crypt for themselves too.”

James was shaking his head very slowly, with a leisurely smile animating his face. “You did not look closely enough,” he said. “There is a change.”

“Oh, I did look closely,” I said. “This is exactly what happened before. Days passed without movement and then the pupae distended and darkened and shriveled to nothing at all. They have all died, I am sure of it.”

“I don’t believe so.” I hadn’t even dented his confidence. “Well, we will know by morning, I should think. If it is going to happen, it will be soon. When the sun comes up would be the most likely time. I have brought blankets. So we may stay all night.”

I had not noticed the blankets, folded neatly in a basket behind the table. I recognized them as the ones that had covered his bed. He fetched one and draped it around my shoulders. My eyes already felt gritty with tiredness, and I stifled a yawn as I clutched the blanket around me and snuggled down into it. It was not richly brocaded like the ones on the bed at Tickenham, but simple woven wool, fragranced with the heady scent of herbs and lavender and just a touch of brimstone, the same aromas that clung to James’s hair and hands and clothes. I breathed them in like balm. He brought his stool around, so he was next to me, very close. I leaned my head on his shoulder and, after a moment, he put his arm around me.

“Sleep now,” he said and the vibration of his voice traveled into my own body and made it hum. “I promise you that I will not. I will wake you the moment anything starts to happen.”

I closed my eyes, my cheek against the slightly prickly cloth of his coat, his arm enfolding me. I had never felt so safe, so at peace. His body was smaller and less muscular than the bodies of the two men I had married, was more like my own. It fit around me perfectly. We were a perfect match. I felt each rhythmic rise and fall of his chest as he breathed, until my own breathing seemed to balance with his.

“Go to sleep,” he urged again.

“I am trying.”

“You do trust me?”

“James, I have always trusted you.”

I could feel the thud of his heart, beating strongly, purposefully. I nestled up closer and was overcome with a sense of profound and sweet tranquillity. I slept. I slept so deeply and so soundly that when he bent his head to my ear and whispered for me to wake up, it was impossible to believe it was dawn.

“One of the pupae is opening,” he said, as I twisted round to look into his tired but happy face.

I was fully awake and on my feet in an instant.

With one finger I carefully lifted the leaves at the front of the tent and saw that one of the little shells was indeed moving, quivering slightly. I looked at James. I rubbed my sleep-blurred eyes and looked back at the coffin. I hardly dared to breathe, lest it upset the transformation process. The pupa shook more vigorously and then it split, like an egg about to hatch. An abdomen thrust forward, threadlike legs scrabbled through the opening. It was happening with such raw, astonishing speed that I was afraid to blink, in case I missed it. There was a trickle of fluid the color of blood and then a glistening rush as the butterfly burst forth, its coffin instantly reduced to nothing now but a fragile husk, empty and abandoned.

“It is true,” I whispered in awe.

I could feel the warmth of James’s smile on my face, even though I could not tear my eyes away from the butterfly to look at him. I was as entranced as I was at the birth of my own children.

“Who claimed the age of miracles is past?” he said.

The new butterfly crept out of the leaf tent and climbed tentatively up onto the stems of the plant. It rested, very still. But then it stirred. The familiar wings unfolded like fans. Dark wings, with a band of vivid orange and splashes of scarlet and the purest snowy white.

“A Red Admiral,” I whispered with wonder. It seemed extraordinary that the first butterfly we had seen being born was one we had named together, as we would have named a child.

We watched it, pumping its wings, as another butterfly emerged.

“They will be hungry,” James said, and from somewhere he produced a honeycomb. “Let’s see if they will take some from you.” He took my finger and dipped it into one of the waxy cells, then made me turn it upward and hold it out toward the butterflies, one of which fluttered up and then down onto my wrist, turned and walked with its wings closed, down toward the honey. One of its little feet made contact with the stickiness and it paused, did a strange stepping dance.

“It’s as if it tastes with its toes,” I whispered.

It uncurled its proboscis and started to feed. Its glorious wings opened. There, perched on my finger, the butterfly that I had witnessed being born. As soon as she had had her fill she flittered off up to the rafters.

I turned to James and I kissed him, on his lips. “Thank you,” I said, but it did not seem enough, not nearly enough. He had given me so much, now and over the years, he had always been there, a friend to turn to, whenever I was in trouble or unhappy, always ready to enthuse and inspire, just like my father had always been, and like John Ray said, he had never demanded anything in return, except that I did not let go of my dreams. And now, I wanted to give him something back.