Lady of the Butterflies
Read Lady of the Butterflies Online
Authors: Fiona Mountain
Table of Contents
“Fiona Mountain is a major new talent in the field of historical fiction. This is history told with integrity, with an authentic feel for the period and vividly rounded characters. All the colors and textures of the seventeenth century are eloquently and evocatively realized here, in wonderful detail, and against this backdrop is set a haunting and tragic narrative.”
—Alison Weir, author of
Captive Queen: A Novel of Eleanor of Aquitaine
“It is a rare talent in an author to be able to mix rigorous historical research with the narrative energies and imagination of a true novelist. Fiona Mountain brings all of these skills to her entrancing
Lady of the Butterflies
. A vivid and fascinating novel about an extraordinary woman, I was gripped from beginning to end.”
—Katie Hickman, author of
The Pindar Diamond
“A fascinating story . . . Richly and brilliantly detailed and full of love and heartbreak.”
—Elizabeth Buchan, author of
Wives Behaving Badly
“A lady lepidopterist may seem an unlikely real-life subject for historical romance, but Mountain makes it work in this first-person account of the life of Eleanor Glanville . . . A lush and confidently plotted historical.”
—
Publishers Weekly
“Mountain dives into her esoteric subject matter headfirst, telling Eleanor’s moving story against a backdrop of rebellion and religious division and the scientific thinking of the time . . . Partly based on actual events, partly reliant on Mountain’s rich imaginings,
Lady of the Butterflies
is a big, chunky, absorbing novel, passionately rendered. In a word: Sweeping.”
—
Townsville Bulletin
(Australia)
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
Copyright © 2009 by Fiona Mountain.
Published by arrangement with Preface Publishing, a division of The Random House Group Limited.
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PRINTING HISTORY
eISBN : 978-1-101-51682-9
Mountain, Fiona.
Lady of the butterflies / Fiona Mountain.—1
st
American ed.
p. cm.
ISBN : 978-1-101-51682-9
1. Glanville, Eleanor, 1654–1709—Fiction. 2. Women entomologists—Great Britain—Fiction. I. Title.
PR6113.O935L
823’.92—dc22
For Tim, Daniel, James, Gabriel and Kezia
Also in memory of my mother,
Muriel Swinburn
You ask what is the use of butterflies? I reply to adorn the world and delight the eyes of men; to brighten the countryside like so many golden jewels. To contemplate their exquisite beauty and variety is to experience the truest pleasure. To gaze enquiringly at such elegance of color and form devised by the ingenuity of nature and painted by her artist’s pencil, is to acknowledge and adore the imprint of the art of God.
John Ray,
History of Insects
(1704)
If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties.
Sir Francis Bacon, author, courtier and philosopher (1561–1626)
November
1695
T
hey say I am mad and perhaps it’s true.
Look. Can’t you see? There are butterflies, bright orange butterflies, even though it’s night, even though it’s November. The black sky is filled with them. They are reflected in the dark floodwaters that lie over the wetlands. But no, I realize in an instant that I am mistaken, of course. It is nothing but the glowing ashes of the Gunpowder Treason Night bonfire, flitting upward in the smoke and the mist.
I hug my arms around myself inside my cloak. I try not to scream.
At the very time when I need all my wits about me, it is frightening to think I can’t even depend upon myself, that my own mind, my own eyes, might betray me, even for a moment. This turbulent century that is nearly at an end has seen brother turn against brother and fathers take up arms against their own sons, but for my little family the treachery goes on.
I walk toward the end of the cobbled causeway that stretches straight and unhindered across the floodwater, all the way to Nailsea. The ground is sodden. The mud sucks at me and the sodden hem of my gown grabs and slaps at my ankles. My feet are so cold and wet I can hardly feel them. But there are far worse troubles than cold toes.
At first no one dares to meet my eyes. They regard me with superstitious fear, as if I were a will-o’-the-wisp. Tenant farmers, eelers, fishermen, wildfowlers and sedge-cutters, they are all gathered here with their kin at the edge of the flooded fields, their faces ghoulish in the flickering flames. No one misses this annual festival of hatred, but in Tickenham this year, it feels as if much of the hatred is turned upon me. My heart is beating too fast and my legs feel weak as reeds. But I keep my head held high. I keep on walking. Though I may only be slight, I am much stronger than people always assume. None shall see that I am afraid.
Fingers reach out to clutch at my cloak; others claw at my arm, at a windblown wisp of my hair. Alice Walker, once my little cookmaid, is the first to throw a rotten apple. It hits my shoulder and splatters. Surprisingly hard they are, apples, when turned into missiles. There is a dull pain and the sudden cloying smell of decay. Someone else spits and the disgusting gob lands on my cheek. I wipe it away with the palm of my hand and pretend not to care. These people were once my neighbors, servants and friends, my family, but now, instead of warm greetings, I hear only their insults, their whispered accusations:
“Papist!”
“Whore!”
“Witch!”
“Lunatic!”
I am none of those things, am I? How could a passion for small, bright-winged creatures have led to this? Just as it led me to James Petiver, the dearest friend any person could hope to have.
But it was another man who set passion burning within me more fiercely than all the fires that flame across England this night, who consumed me until I am nothing but a husk blowing on the wind. It is Richard Glanville, beautiful as a girl with his black curls and blue eyes, who brought me light in the darkness and warmth in the cold in a way that no winter bonfire ever can. In my memory his caress is like the brush of a butterfly’s wing upon my skin, upon my breasts and the secret places beneath my shift, but all memories have turned to dust in the glare of what I have discovered.
What have you done, Richard? What have you done? Is it the flames of Hellfire that you conjured? My own Judas, did you betray me with a kiss?
Why?
I began keeping a journal to record my work. Though I don’t presume it amounts to much, is of any great significance to the world of natural philosophy, James told me it was the best way to record my observations and to learn. I’m glad now that I’ve done it, for reasons I’d never have considered.
The time is coming when my voice maybe silenced for good. God in Heaven, how has it come to this? It is well known that lust brings madness and desperation and ruin. But upon my oath, I never meant any harm.
All I ever wanted was to be happy, to love and to be loved in return, and for my life to count for something.
That is not madness, is it?