Lady of the Butterflies (56 page)

It fell open at a particular page and two pressed golden butterfly wings came fluttering out. Jane Jennings gave a little squeal and threw back her arms as if she had seen dried toads.

“Calm yourself, woman,” Mistress Keene scolded. “They’re dead’uns. She used to collect ’em as a child.”

“I heard tell of a witch that had a butterfly as her familiar instead of a cat,” Jane Jennings whispered. “It flew beside her shoulder.”

“Well, them’s not flying anywhere,” Mistress Keene said baldly.

But Jane was not done. “Instead of feeding off flowers, the insect servant supped from a Devil’s teat on the witch’s palm.”

I felt a dozen eyes scrutinize my own hands and my bloated abdomen for sign of such a diabolical mark. I felt a chill in my bones, and then I was lost to a surge of gripping pain that told me my baby was about to enter the world. I put my hands between my legs and felt the dome of a slippery head and I bore down and gave one final mighty push. There was heat and wetness and a tearing agony, and then there was a silence. It was shattered by the unmistakable, miraculous wail of a newborn infant.

Mother Wall told me that I had not given Richard a second son as he had wished. The pattern had been repeated. We had a daughter.

“Her name is Eleanor,” I said, suddenly wanting some unbreakable link with this house, with the past, for all I had avoided it with Forest. “She is to be named for my mother. We shall call her Ellie.”

Jane Jennings peered at her suspiciously to see if she was properly formed, but already I knew that she was perfect.

Autumn

1688

F
or once the sound of the steady falling autumn rain did not dispirit me. I did not dread the coming of winter. My baby girl had mild blue eyes as soft as the mist, and her gummy smile was a little ray of sunshine that made me forget the rising floods entirely. The pitter-patter of the rain against the window was a soothing sound that only served to make the nursery seem all the more snug and warm.

The infinite nature of love astounded me. I loved my husband and my three children with my whole heart. But then along came another baby, and the amount of love I had to give expanded. I did not love any of them less for the fact that they had to share me with one more little person.

Ellie drew Richard and me closer together again too. Now that he had met her, he did not seem to mind at all that she was a girl. On the contrary, he seemed glad, was utterly enchanted by his tiny daughter. He had taken to going to sleep with her curled up on his chest, and to propping her up on plump cushions so he could play the lute and sing to her, which was the most adorable thing to see. And to hear. Richard had a lovely singing voice, deeper than his spoken voice, very gentle. When he declared that he’d far prefer a houseful of daughters to more sons, would like me to breed a whole gaggle of girls as sweet as Ellie, I told him it would be my greatest pleasure to oblige.

“I swear that little lass grows prettier by the day.” He smiled when he strolled into the parlor and saw me cradling Ellie by a blazing fire. Raindrops jeweled his dark cloak, and his breath, when he leaned over to kiss us both in turn, smelled exotically of rum. He had been hunting deer at Ashton Court, drinking with the Smythes and Digbys, and it had put him in a particularly bright mood. “She is as lovely as her mother,” he said, kissing me again on my lips. “Pretty as a princess, in fact. A duchess at least.”

“She is.”

He swung his cloak off his shoulders, unbuckled his sword and sprawled before the hearth at my feet. “I have the most beautiful wife and the most beautiful baby daughter. Any man would envy me, I think.”

“Even with insurmountable debts?” I could not help but ask.

“What of them?” He gave one of the logs a kick with his boot and made the sparks fly. “We have a loan from the Earl of Bristol, no less.”

Winter

1688

I
t was the Earl himself who rode over to share the news that William of Orange had landed at Torbay in Devon. On the very anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot, he had marched onto English soil beneath a banner that proclaimed,
The Liberties of England and the Protestant Religion, I will maintain.

William’s fleet did more than rival the Armada, it was four times the size of it. Sixty thousand men and five thousand horses had sailed into the English Channel in a square formation twenty-five ships deep, so vast that it saluted Dover Castle and Calais simultaneously to demonstrate its strength. But, as George Digby returned to report, William’s men did not forage or plunder or do anything to antagonize the English people, who in turn had neither rallied behind the King nor declared for William. War-weary, we all merely waited to see what turn events would take.

The first royal blood was shed in a skirmish in Somersetshire, at Wincanton, but bar that and a few anti-Catholic riots, it turned out to be a blessedly bloodless revolution that was soon ended. By the close of December, King James had fled to France, paving the way for William and Mary to be offered the throne as joint rulers.

“The real ruler now is Parliament, of course,” George Digby said with an incorrigibly merry smile as Richard poured him yet another measure of celebratory claret. “The passing of the Bill of Rights means that never again will a king or queen of England hold absolute power. Furthermore, it takes away forever the possibility of a Catholic monarchy.” He turned his arresting gaze from Richard to me. “Your good father can rest in peace at last,” he said. “Catholicism is dead forever in England.” He quaffed more wine and raised his glass in a blithe and generous toast to the neighbor who had loathed him. “A glorious revolution indeed. So here’s to Major Goodricke. His battle is now over. He got what he wanted in the end.”

“Save that his daughter is clad in the most un-Puritanical silk and sapphires and ribbons.” Richard smiled, twining one of my gold ringlets around his finger.

Over the rim of my wine goblet, in the flickering golden light of the best wax candles, I returned the mildly drunken but fond gazes of my glamorous husband and his equally glamorous friend, who were both now openly admiring me in my pearls and cerulean gown of silk brocade. I had all that I wanted too. I had all that I had ever desired, and yet it felt that something vital was still missing from my life
.
It lacked some purpose. It lacked that sense of adventure and discovery that had always been so necessary to me.

Stop being greedy, Eleanor. Do not ask for too much, or you might lose all that you already have.

Part Four

Spring

1695

SEVEN YEARS LATER

I
looked down into my younger son’s cupped hands as we stalked through the knee-high summer growth of rushes and sedges on the moor. “What have you found this time, Dickon?”

He stopped. I crouched down in front of him as he opened his fingers like a clamshell and I met the beady yellow eyes and pulsating throat of a small green toad. With one finger Dickon caressed its knobbly back. “He was so far away from the river I was worried he would dry out in the heat. I am going to keep him for a while and then set him free again by Monk’s Pool.”

“He will be in very good company in the nursery, what with the grass snake and the runt of the piglets and the blind hound.” I smiled fondly. “Not to mention Snowflake.”

Dickon looked at me with his infinitely trusting pale blue eyes. “You said she would fly away with the others when they left in the spring but she did not seem to want to go, did she, Mama?”

“No, she did not.” I stroked his sun-streaked yellow hair. “You have obviously made her far too comfortable to want to go anywhere.”

The swan had a damaged wing, and Dickon had reared her from a cygnet, feeding her from his hand. He had a talent for caring for animals that were wounded or in need of nurturing, people too, including his baby sister, Ellen.

I could see Ellie now, with Mary, at the bottom of the water meadow. In ringlets and ribbons and matching lemon gowns over white frilled petticoats, they were a beguiling sight, my two daughters, capering amidst the sunlit daisies and buttercups. Ellen was picking flowers while dancing. She danced wherever she went.

I knew that Mary was missing Forest. He had left a week ago on a ship bound for the Low Countries, where William Merrick had acquaintances. Forest was eighteen now, and Flanders was said to be so like Somersetshire that I hoped he would not feel too homesick. Their agricultural techniques were far in advance of ours, and it was my hope that this adventure would give Forest the perfect opportunity to learn how to manage the land he would one day inherit.

The plans to drain had never materialized, nor would they now, at least not in my lifetime. If I’d not put paid to those plans before Sedgemoor, I would have done it in the aftermath. It would take a long time for the West Country to recover from Monmouth’s uprising and I had no desire to bring more distress to the people of Tickenham, any more than did Richard, who had taken great pains, with doles and feasts, to help them forget their losses, forget he had ever sided with the militia. It would be Forest’s decision now, to drain or not to drain, and I meant him to be better informed than I or my father had ever been.

I saw Bess crossing the arched stone bridge on her way back from taking a bowl of broth to her mother, old now and ill for some time.

“How is she?” Dickon inquired of Bess before I had a chance.

“Not much better, I am afraid.” She regarded him warmly, her gap-toothed smile even more pronounced as she had aged and grown stouter. “But thank you for asking, Dickon.”

“We could take her some pottage and apple pie tomorrow,” Dickon said. “And some salves for the sores on her back.”

“That is very thoughtful. She’d appreciate that,” Bess said.

“Is there anything else she needs?” I asked.

“She keeps asking for Tom.”

I took a deep breath. “Then you must send for him, Bess. Tell him to come right away.”

“I did,” she admitted awkwardly. “He is already here.” Then: “Do you mind?”

“It is right that he should come back to Tickenham,” I said. “It is his home, after all.”

Since Richard had insisted we keep pace with the grandest households and hire a housekeeper and a steward, Bess had been given the official title of waiting woman to me, but neither of us had spoken about Thomas for a long time, beyond Bess mentioning that he had found employment in the Billingsgate fish market. He had remained in London even after the official pardon had been issued. The rest of the men, John Hort’s son and the one surviving Bennett boy, had come out of hiding, but Thomas had not returned to Tickenham and I could not pretend that I had not been relieved. Now that the reason for his hostility toward me had been brought out into the open, I feared it would be harder to face him somehow. I knew that I would never feel so at ease when I brought the children down for walks on the moor if I knew he might be there, resentful that it was not his moor we walked upon.

Bess walked with Dickon and me to the butterfly garden that her Ned had helped me plant so long ago. It was an abundant, kingly garden now, all cloaked in royal purple and gold, with thistles and purple loosestrife and the violet of the marjoram contrasting with the yellow of the marsh marigolds.

There was always a profusion of butterflies there, but this morning the combination of bright sunshine and still air had brought out a whole host of them that quite took my breath away. I halted my step. There were dozens, Large Whites, Large Coppers, Tortoiseshells, Brimstones, Fritillaries, Red Admirals, so many they were almost alarming in their great multitude. It was as if they had convened for some special purpose and we had intruded.

“A plague of butterflies,” Bess whispered with wonder.

As I took a few half-wary steps into the bright blizzard, a great swarm of them rose up in unison, an angelic ambush. I ducked and raised my hand to shield my face from the disquieting flicker and quiver of so many little wings.

The throng descended, like a handful of winged flowers, living petals thrown at a fairy bride on her wedding day, and I realized that Dickon still had not moved, was standing enraptured at the arched stone entrance to the garden. It was with a strange sweet longing for my childhood that I watched my son as he watched the butterflies that continued to flit around like animated jewels, spangling the warm, clear air and dancing from flower to flower.

The summer had been late in coming and recently they seemed to be getting shorter with every year, so short that the harvests were failing, bread was in poor supply, and people were going hungry. Since the start of the new decade the winters had been colder and longer, with weeks of ice and snow and frost. So the butterflies were a particularly welcome sight. And so many, almost as if they had been biding their time, waiting for this rare warmth and sunshine, determined to make the best of it while it lasted.

“Don’t you want to catch one of them?” Bess asked Dickon.

He shook his head very definitely.

“Your mother used to.”

I’d thought that I had no real interest in butterflies anymore, that the enchantment had left me for good, but now I was not so sure. Standing amongst this lovely cornucopia, I had a stirring of desire for them, like a tingle in my fingertips.

Bess was watching me. “Are you wishing you had your net, even now?”

I sat down on a stone bench in an arbor. “Look at me.” I flicked my skirt with my ribboned slipper and made it swish. I was wearing emerald silk and there were rubies around my throat and in my ears. “I have a closetful of silk dresses and a casketful of gems. I have a house filled with liveried footmen and japanned looking-glasses and French glassware and Chinese porcelain. What need have I to go chasing after tiny fragments of color anymore?”

If I did not exactly encourage Richard’s increasing extravagance, I did not discourage it either. I had loved to hear him talk once of the elegantly proportioned Dutch merchants’ houses fronting the canals in Amsterdam, the likes of which were being replicated in Bath now that we had a Dutch king. If we could not have the colonnades and domes that so impressed Richard as a destitute child, we could at least have rich interiors and replicate the grand state rooms of the Bath houses. Now we had striped muslin curtains, silk damask armchairs and a glass-windowed coach in a new coach house. But they had become like bright disguises to lay over the cracks that had opened up in our marriage, like the Oriental carpets we had bought to lay over the cold stone flags and the hand-painted silk paper we used to cover the fissures in the crumbling walls.

I had not found possessing such things nearly as fulfilling as I had once thought it would be, but the more Richard had, the more he seemed to want. Nothing seemed to be enough for him, as if there was a need in him that could never be met, a void that could never be filled, not even by me, least of all by me.

Dickon came to stand in front of me. “The toad needs shade.”

“You take him on up to the house then, darling. I’ll come in a while.”

He delayed, unwilling to go. “Is my father home?”

“No. He has gone to Wraxall.”

His bony little shoulders relaxed and he set off up the path.

“I do wish the two of them could get along better,” I sighed.

“Mr. Glanville always made such an effort with Forest that I can forgive him much,” Bess said, leaping to Richard’s defense in a way that made me smile. “It was a wonder to see, how he was with Mr. Edmund’s fatherless little boy, and how Forest was with him. They still have a rare bond, don’t they? It would be unusual enough for father and son to be so close, but for stepson and stepfather . . . well, you have to admit it is extraordinary.”

“It is.”

I remembered what Richard had said:
I would have liked the best for my children. But even my firstborn son must take second place.
A reference to the marriage settlement. Always that. But a tiny part of me also feared it held the key to the preferential treatment Richard always showed Forest. He was the lord in waiting, the heir, when no son of Richard’s ever could be.

“I agree it is a pity he does not have the same bond with his own little boy,” Bess said.

“Dickon is such a timid, sensitive child,” I said. “And I think Richard probably was once too, but was never allowed to be, and now he finds it difficult to accept his own son, which only makes Dickon all the more nervous around him.”

“Well,” Bess said. “I’ll go and keep the lad company, see if he wants a glass of cider. You stay here and enjoy the sunshine. And the butterflies.”

THAT NIGHT I HAD the strangest dream. A swarm of yellow butterflies, far greater than had gathered in the garden, had invaded my darkened chamber and found their way inside the bed curtains that, in my dream, were closed despite the airless summer night. In my sleep I was tormented and almost suffocated by the luminous, insistent wings. They gently battered and brushed my face, swirled before my eyes and filled my head, as if to rouse me to action.

My father, like all Puritans, had set much store by dreams and what they revealed about a person’s character and destiny. I did not understand what this dream meant, but even when I woke it did not entirely leave me, remained with me throughout the morning.

When Richard came to find me, I had returned to the butterfly garden. He sat down on the sunny stone bench beside me, waved his hand in front of my face. “Where are you, Nell?” he asked, with a touch of impatience. “You seem very far away.”

I could often have said the same about him. Somehow, though I still loved him, knew he loved me, we had grown very far away from each other. How had that happened? Why?

I took his hand, brought it to my lips and kissed it. “See? I am right here.”

The bright sunlight highlighted the slight streaks of silver in his black curls, around his temples and his ears. There was doubtless gray in my own hair too, but it did not show up so clearly against the gold. There was the faintest web of lines around his eyes too, but only when he smiled, and the blue of them had not faded. If anything the years had made him more attractive, rather than less, had added a character and dignity to his face that made it all the more compelling to me. He was still beautiful, still by turns devastatingly charming and charmingly vulnerable. He still suffered from nightmares he would never talk about, was more prone than ever to being withdrawn, more troubled than ever he had been before we were married. And nothing I did seemed to help him at all, so that I had practically abandoned any attempt to do so.

He was wearing ink-blue breeches and a long waistcoat but had no jacket on. I rested my cheek against the soft linen gathers of his shirtsleeves, smoothed them down lest I be smothered by the fullness of them.

“George Digby has invited me on a deer hunt,” he said. “D’you think Dickon would like to come?”

I straightened. “Oh, Richard, love, I don’t. He would hate it.”

“You’ve turned the boy into a milksop,” he said harshly. “I don’t know how to talk to him.”

“Yes you do. Talk to him as you talk to me. As you talk to the girls.”

“But he is not a girl, damn it!”

“My father treated me as if I was a boy, and I’d not have had it any other way. I was different from other girls, and Dickon is different from other boys. He does not like hunting and swordplay, any more than I liked crewelwork and embroidery. You have to respect that.”

I sensed he was on the brink of arguing with me, but held himself back as if he did not have the stomach for another quarrel. No more than did I. “So what shall you do today,” he asked, “if you are not to be kept busy with a needle?”