Lady of the Butterflies (9 page)

I turned and ran through the churchyard, crashed through the gate in the Barton wall, all the way into the darkened hall of the house. I climbed onto a bench and reached up to the sword that hung on the wall. It was heavy, nearly as tall as I, but I had good, strong muscles from climbing trees and wielded it like an avenging angel. I was already halfway up the winding stone stairs before I saw torches coming through the dark garden.

I flung the sword on the bed and ripped off my black dress. Holding it at arm’s length, standing like a ghost in the darkness in just my shift, I slashed at the black material with the sword, slashed and slashed with all my might, until my dress was torn to shreds, a mass of black ribbons. Black for mourning. Black for Puritanism. Black for despair.

I threw it on the floor and dragged my other identical dress from the chest. I hacked at that too, stuck in the sword and twisted to gouge great holes. When I was satisfied at the damage I’d caused, I cast the ruined garment onto the pile of rags and stamped on it, the tears streaming down my face now. Then I stood there in my shift in the silence, the ripped dresses an unidentifiable black mass, like a crouching shadow at my feet.

But it wasn’t totally silent. Something was tapping lightly on the glass, like ghostly fingers. I stood perfectly still and listened, my heart pounding, a sudden flood of guilt convincing me that my father had come back from the dead to punish me for what I had just done.

I made myself creep over to the window. I lifted my hand and tentatively moved the drapes aside. I gasped at what I saw. A white butterfly, luminous in the dark, trapped behind the heavy crewelwork, was trying to escape. I remembered what my father had said about butterflies symbolizing the souls of the dead and a shiver ran down my spine. I flung open the window to set the little creature free. It fluttered out instantly and as I watched it disappear into the warm, dark sky, my heart soared with it.

My father’s hand had been so dry after the fever, but I tried to see his entry into the watery grave not as sinking but as a baptism. I tried to picture the water seeping into him, replenishing his body, making it whole so that one day it would rise again, just as he had described, as if on white shimmering wings.

Find a way to believe in that, Eleanor, find a way to believe in it.

Part Two

Spring

1673

EIGHT YEARS LATER

C
risp March sunlight streamed in at the window of the smart Bristol tailor’s shop where I stood amidst bright bolts of satin and silk. I turned around slowly, making the sky-blue silk skirt of my lovely new gown swish and sway around my ankles. The gown was full-sleeved, with a low, broad neckline and tightly boned, pointed bodice with a full overskirt drawn back to reveal a petticoat heavily decorated with silvery braid and cascades of frothy white Italian lace.

“It’s been smuggled into the country,” the fashionably dressed young tailor informed me proudly. “Much finer than regulation English lace.”

“It’s beautiful,” I murmured, rubbing it gently between my thumb and forefinger. “Like a cobweb.”

He raised a brow. “You’re the first girl I’ve ever met who’s referred to a cobweb as a thing of beauty. Most ladies find them rather ghastly.”

“Oh, but they are beautiful, sir,” I exclaimed, looking up at him with an avid smile. “Every bit as beautiful and intricate as this lace. With the frost or the dew sparkling on them first thing in the morning, they are more lovely even than a necklace of diamonds. There is nothing in the world more lovely. Spiders are amazing creatures, don’t you think, to be able to create such things?”

“You’re a quaint one, all right.”

“You must have seen silkworms at work?” I asked. “Since you work with the material all the time.”

He laughed at that. “I’ve no interest whatsoever in the worms themselves or how they do what they do. Just so long as they keep on doing it, that’s all I ask.”

“Did you know, a single silkworm cocoon is made of one unbroken thread of raw silk over three thousand feet long?”

“Is it, now?”

“Don’t you think that’s astonishing?”

“I suppose it is.”

I stroked the material of my beautiful new gown. Well, I at least was very grateful to the little worms that had spent so much time and energy spinning it for me to wear.

“D’you like it, then, miss?”

“Oh, yes. Very much. Thank you.”

He smiled at my unrestrained gratitude. “A beautiful girl like you was born to wear a gown like this.” His words sounded genuine, for all that they were probably a practiced trick of his trade.

Under his appraising eyes I felt myself flush and glanced away, surreptitiously, to the tall mirror on the far wall. I was still so unaccustomed to seeing my own image so clearly that it utterly fascinated me, but I cast a critical glance over the stranger I saw reflected back at me, a girl in a shimmering blue silk gown, with eyes of the same color framed by long, sooty lashes. They were still as wide as a child’s, those eyes, but they were a woman’s eyes now, and they were far too direct, too animated and vivid, not at all docile and modest as all definitions of feminine beauty dictated. Even after a long winter, this girl’s skin was creamy rather than alabaster, the impression of vitality enhanced by the brightness of her curls. She was like the water meadows in springtime, bursting forth with an abundance of life, too much life to be contained in such a slight little body. Was she really me? And was she beautiful? I was not at all sure many respectable gentlemen would think so.

There was only one gentleman whose opinion mattered to me, though, and I would know soon enough what it was.

“Hold still, now,” the tailor said, “while I adjust the hem.” He removed a pin from where it was stowed between his teeth and stuck it into the fabric. “I’ll need to take up another inch. How old did you say you are?”

“Almost twenty.” I smiled proudly, as if it was a very great age indeed.

He looked at me as if he didn’t quite believe me. But it was true. I was under five feet tall, a good three or four inches shorter than most girls my age, but I didn’t have any more growing to do.

“For a special occasion, is it, the gown?” the tailor asked. “Sweetheart paying you a visit, is he?”

My blush deepened. “Oh, I don’t have a sweetheart.”

He glanced up at my pink cheeks, winked. “Ah, but there is someone you like, I think?”

I had not seen Edmund Ashfield since I was eleven. Nine whole years had passed since then. I knew for a fact that my guardian had long favored a match between us and he had surely invited Edmund to visit to determine if he too was in favor of it. Why else was I to have a lovely new gown for the occasion? Edmund was arriving from Suffolk on Friday, and for so many reasons I was half in dread of seeing him again. What if he had changed? It was surely impossible for him to be as wondrous as I remembered him. As I had grown from child to woman, all my fantasies of falling in love had centered on him. And how could any man possibly live up to them, live up to my most cherished memory of a gleaming knight striding in out of the rain and lighting up my life?

What if he did not want me?

TO HELP PASS the time until Edmund’s arrival, I went to tend the bulbs beneath my mother’s walnut tree. It stood on the stretch of grass bordered by the cow barn and the rectory. She had planted it herself but never lived to see its first blossom. Soon it would be a mass of white petals and fresh green leaves and, despite its smallness, it already hinted at the majesty it would one day possess.

I was kneeling down on a jute sack, pulling weeds from the black peaty earth, when Mr. Merrick came strutting across the soggy ground with his stiff lacquered cane and—never seen before this—a book in his hands. I wrenched out a particularly tenacious dandelion by its roots, showering my skirt with particles of soil in the process, then stood, as was expected of me in my guardian’s presence, not that I was favored with it very often. He was too busy attending to his business interests in Bristol. My aged great-aunt Elizabeth from Ribston had been installed in the house to watch over me. Supposedly. She was kind, but she had had apoplexy a year ago and barely moved from her chamber now.

I wiped my dirty hands hastily on the jute and then smoothed away a lock of hair that had broken free from its fastenings as usual and had tumbled down over my brow.

“Why must you be forever fussing with that blessed shrub?” Mr. Merrick snapped.

I judged that question unworthy of a reply, saw that the dignity and splendor of the little tree didn’t touch him at all. Though doubtless he’d be quick to calculate how much its wood would be worth in a few years to the cabinetmakers and gunsmiths.

“I was wondering when the walnuts will come, since they’re such a delicacy,” he said. “No doubt you can tell me precisely, given that you have an answer for everything.”

I shaped my mouth to say October, but he didn’t wait to hear. “I had a most interesting conversation with the tailor when I went to settle the bill for your gown,” he said acidly. “You made quite an impression on him.”

“Did I, sir?”

“He’s not accustomed to having conversations with ladies about insects while he’s doing his measuring.”

“Isn’t he?”

“You know damned well he’s not, girl.” His small, nondescript eyes had all but vanished they were so narrowed in his reddened face, and he puffed up his pigeon chest and glowered at me. “I blame John Burges for this entirely,” he exploded. “I left him and his wife in charge of your welfare and only now do I find that they have been utterly negligent.”

“That’s not true,” I said, indignantly. “John and Mary have cared for me very well.”

“Evidently,” he spat. “They have taught you that it is acceptable for a young lady to quarrel with and contradict her guardian. And instead of ensuring you are proficient at embroidery, drawing and dancing, as well as balancing budgets and managing a household, you have been learning about worms.”

I could have told Mr. Merrick that if he had taken any interest in me whatsoever over the past years, he would have discovered long ago that though I had no liking for embroidery I loved to dance, had a whole sketchbook filled with studies of butterflies and orchids and water snails and had paid great attention to the lessons I had been given on how to balance budgets, since I wanted to manage the estate competently as I had promised my father I would do. Admittedly I had given just as much attention and care to the books in the library and to my own natural observations. If Mr. Merrick had ever bothered about my welfare before now, he would have known that those books had become my constant companions, that I loved them so well I had practically memorized every page. I had taught Reverend Burges as much about God’s natural creation, about the behavior of grass snakes and damselflies, as ever he had taught me about algebra and Latin and geography. “John made a pledge to my father that he would make sure I continued my studies,” I said quietly. “I made a pledge to him too.”

“Well, then, you will have to break it.” Mr. Merrick rounded on me spitefully. “You will continue these absurd studies no more. From now on you will receive instruction
only
in dancing and music and drawing and housewifery, like a proper young lady. You have had your final lesson with the reverend, or he will find he has preached his final sermon in this parish. Do I make myself clear?”

For John and Mary’s sake, I nodded submissively, even as I clenched my hands into fists behind the folds of my skirt.

“I have already removed all of your father’s books from the house.”

“No! Please, sir, anything but . . .”

“They will be returned to you when you come into your inheritance and are no longer my concern. Your father made the gravest mistake teaching you to take an interest in masculine concerns,” he added superciliously. “The weaker sex may have fruitful wombs but they’ve barren brains. Learning makes them impertinent and vain and cunning as foxes. I fear I shall never get you off my hands, even if you do come with a fine manor and a good income. I caution you to mind your tongue when you meet Mr. Ashfield again.” He smirked nastily, as if he knew very well how what he was about to say would cut me to the quick. “No gentleman wants to marry an educated girl.”

“I understand your wife is very competent in business, sir,” I said, voicing what I had always taken as an assurance that women had an accepted place beyond homemaking. “She is your trusted partner in most of your ventures, I gather.”

“She is a city wife.”

He did not need to elaborate. City merchants were happy to have wives who were helpmeets, whereas gentry marriages were bound by an entirely different set of rules. What gentry husbands looked for were meek and dutiful wives. What a man like Edmund Ashfield would be looking for was a meek and dutiful wife, not a know-it-all.

Not me.

“Your father chose me as your guardian because he knew I would make a good guardian for Tickenham Court,” Mr. Merrick continued. “You have me and the trustees to thank for the fact that you shall have an income of six hundred pounds a year.” He touched the bedraggled edge of my dress with the toe of his highly polished buckled shoe. “Enough to keep you in pretty gowns, no matter how many you’ll undoubtedly ruin by wandering around like a Romany. But pretty gowns do not come cheap and I’d like to see a return on my investment. I’d like to see you betrothed and off my hands as soon as possible.” He glanced at the book he had been holding, drummed his stubby beringed fingers on the cover. “This is the only book you will be reading from now on, and since you are so keen on study, I urge you to study this particularly well.”

He held it out to me and I took it reluctantly, glanced at the cover.

“It’s a conduct book, in case you are wondering. For most gentry girls it is as important as the Bible. It instructs you on how to behave. The skills you will need in order to secure a husband and then fulfill your wifely duties.”

Stubbornly, I knelt back down on the ground. I laid the conduct book to one side on the grass and attacked another dandelion. But as soon as Mr. Merrick had gone, I picked up the book and flicked through the pages.

EDMUND ASHFIELD ARRIVED at Tickenham Court in the early evening while Bess was dressing me in my new gown. He and Mr. Merrick immediately shut themselves away in the parlor, so I did not get to see him until supper, when my guardian seated himself beside our guest at the polished oak refectory table.