by Elsa Hart
“Smyrna, of course,” said Helm. Interest lit his weary features. “If you yourself have traveled in the Levant, perhaps you would speak to me of the wonders you saw there. Did you happen upon any serpents? I have a particular interest in serpents.”
“I did,” said Cecily. She was gratified by the question. This was exactly the sort of discourse she had hoped awaited her in the Mayne house. But before she could continue, Sir Barnaby interrupted.
“I would have thought,” he said acidly to Helm, “that my books and specimens would be sufficient to occupy you.” He turned to Cecily. “Mr. Helm is here today to make a study of the serpents in my collection. I make every effort to accommodate the requests of scholars, but I have just been reminded of why I do not like to crowd the house.”
Helm was looking up at the jars on the shelf. “Ah,” he said mournfully. “I see you keep serpents here, too. I hope I have not most unfortunately trod upon one of them.”
“It was not a serpent,” growled Sir Barnaby. “It was a very rare fish. I suggest you return to the desk provided for your use. If you require assistance locating a specimen, Dinley will help you after he has finished here.”
As if he saw in the words of his displeased host a chance to make amends, Helm answered with as much animation as his uncertain English allowed. “Ah, indeed I am in no need of aid. How could I be? Your system of arrangement is the most orderly and comprehensible of any I have seen in my travels. It is a great pleasure to me to conduct my study in the house of Mayne. Also as I have much enjoyed the company of yourself, and of Mr. Dinley, and of your lady illustrator, who expressed to me such sincere interest in the coloration of scales—”
“If you desire further speech with Mrs. Barlow, by all means seek her out,” said Sir Barnaby, putting an impatient end to Helm’s praise. “I have no time to converse with you now.”
“Yes, yes, of course,” said Helm meekly. “I will go to my work. I am most sorry for the loss of the fish.” He bowed again to Cecily before backing slowly into the other room and closing the door. The silvery chime of a standing clock proclaimed the hour of one. Thomasin arrived, mop and bucket in hand, accompanied by a man of middle age whose forearms were flecked with flour and who exuded a fragrance of herbs.
Sir Barnaby addressed Cecily. “John will take you to your room and assist you with your belongings. The tour will convene in the Stone Room at half past two. The clocks in the house keep accurate time, and I insist on punctuality.”
Dinley returned carrying a jar, which Sir Barnaby informed him coldly would no longer be necessary. “You will have to make a note to acquire a new specimen,” he said. “Which of my correspondents will be making the journey through Gibraltar this year? Livesy? Scarcliff? Watson?”
“W-Watson, I believe,” murmured Dinley.
As Cecily followed John up the stairs, she listened to Sir Barnaby fling demands at his hapless curator.
“Have you replaced the wire in the jaw of the hartebeest?”
“N-not yet.”
“And the butterfly boxes? Are they dusted?”
“No. I intended to—”
“Your incompetence requires no explanation. I will be in my study. If the house is not ready when my guests arrive, you will answer for it.”
A memory returned to Cecily, of a sailor stooped over a gleaming fish lying still on the wooden planks of the harbor at Gibraltar. Cecily had asked him why it was called the vipermouth. Because, he had responded, like the viper, it swallows its prey whole.
CHAPTER 3
The guest bedroom that was to be Cecily’s home for a week appeared to prioritize the comfort of the collection over that of a person. The laden shelves that lined its walls were free of dust and soot, while the blue velvet curtains around the bed were faded and moth-eaten. Whorled shells and the spiny husks of sea urchins covered not only the desk by the window, but also the seat of the chair drawn up to it. The wall above the dresser, instead of being fitted with a mirror, was hung with a vast tessellation of mounted fish jaws.
Cecily, unperturbed by the arrangement, regarded with pride the three rectangular bundles she had arranged neatly on the floor. The leather belts that bound them were stained and rough, but remained tight. The edges, formed by hundreds of sheets of stacked brown paper, were still crisp. She knelt beside one of the bundles, loosened the belt, and carefully lifted the board and top sheet away to examine the plant resting flat beneath.
She smiled. It was dry. The leaves were intact. The translucent petals of its three flowers retained their pink color. She reflected with pleasure that after a journey of two months through storms on land and sea, the plants appeared less waterlogged and wind-chapped than she did. A brief inspection satisfied her that the rest of the specimens were, for the most part, in equally good condition. She reassembled the stack and pulled the belt tight again.
When she had exchanged her boots for clean slippers, she went out onto the landing that separated her room from the one opposite. The space, though windowless, was expansive enough to be considered a chamber in its own right. It was dedicated to a display of corals, which filled the shelves in tiny kingdoms of pink and white. According to a longcase clock with a loud tick, the time was half past one. There was still an hour before the tour was to begin. Cecily eyed the closed door of the other room. Sir Barnaby had not forbidden her from exploring.
It should have occurred to her to knock, but the quiet upper stories of the house seemed so devoted to the collection that she did not expect to encounter another living being. She opened the door, stepped inside, and halted abruptly as the woman seated at a desk in the gray light of a window turned to see who had come in. Cecily apologized, but even as she offered the polite excuses appropriate in the event of intruding upon a stranger, she began to feel that the woman was not a stranger at all.
The woman seemed to be having a similar reaction to the sight of Cecily. She leaned forward in her chair and fixed Cecily with an intent stare. Slowly, she lowered the paintbrush she was holding. Its bristles left a bright smudge of blue on the paper resting on the desk. All at once the woman leapt to her feet. A cloud of pencil shavings scattered from the folds of her skirt to the floor as she crossed the room. “Cecily!” she cried.
The face of a girl appeared in Cecily’s mind. She heard as if from a great distance a child’s voice calling, and saw the open door of a cottage framed in tangled vines. Memory supplied her with a name. “Meacan?”
Before she could take a step back, Cecily found her arms held in a warm half embrace. “It is you,” said Meacan. “After a hundred years! Cecily Goodrick.”
The sound of her maiden name heightened Cecily’s sense of disorientation. “It’s Cecily Kay now,” she managed.
“Barlow,” announced Meacan. “I’m Meacan Barlow.”
The two women regarded each other. It had not in fact been a hundred years since they had last done so, but twenty-five. Cecily had been the shorter of the two when they were girls of nine and ten, and was now the taller. Her dark hair was laced with silver and her eyes were a forthright blue. She had the lean, sturdy posture and wind-grooved skin of hard travel, and had not been back in England long enough for the sun to retreat from her burnished cheeks or for her chapped lips to heal. Meacan, in contrast, had rounded and softened with the accumulation of years, and the lines of her face were more suggestive of laughter and tears than of nature’s gusts. Her hair, which had been a haze of yellow when she was a girl, had darkened to sparrow brown, and was mostly but not entirely confined by its pins.
Cecily and Meacan had met during the reign of the Merry Monarch, in the year 1678. Opinions popular at that time included the belief that all Catholics were conspiring against the king, the acknowledgment that allowing women to play the roles of women onstage might be of some benefit to theater, and the feeling that marriage was best avoided by gentlemen gardeners, as it interfered with their work. Meacan’s father, one of the most respected gardeners in England, did not conform to
this expectation. He not only had a wife and children, but did not like to be parted from them. When Cecily’s father hired him to spend a year beautifying the grounds of the estate, the gardener brought his family with him.
Had James Goodrick not been a lover of books who studied even the least tolerated philosophies of his time with interest, his daughter might never have become acquainted with the daughter of the visiting gardener. As it was, he had recently been inspired by the principles of the persecuted Quakers to give Cecily a broad education. When he learned that there was to be another girl of about Cecily’s age on the estate, he extended the services of Cecily’s tutors to her. So it was that while their fathers sketched parterres and debated the placement of trees, Cecily and Meacan became first classmates, then friends.
Meacan shook her head in wonder and released Cecily’s arms. “You don’t look as if you’ve come from Durham,” she said. Her attention shifted from Cecily’s face to her dress. She scrutinized the muted purple fabric. “And I haven’t seen silk of this color in any of the London shops. Where have you been?”
“In Smyrna,” Cecily answered. “My husband was appointed consul there seven years ago.”
Cecily read the curiosity in Meacan’s eyes and hesitated. She thought of the confidences they had shared while navigating the gnarled lower branches of chestnut trees and wading through wilderness ponds as tadpoles tickled their feet. That had been a long time ago. The familiarity between them had faded like an old tapestry exposed to years of blanching sunlight. And Cecily was unused to discussing matters of the heart.
Her marriage, though better than many, was not a convivial one. She wished that as a young woman of nineteen she had been more discerning, but Andrew’s apparent desire to learn more of the world had charmed her. Andrew, in turn, had been delighted by his bride’s eager questions when he believed the source of her enthusiasm to be her fascination with him. By the time Cecily realized that Andrew’s chief interest was in wealth, advancement, and other women, and Andrew realized that his wife had an embarrassing habit of demonstrating knowledge superior to his, it was too late. Their disappointment in each other had simmered until, two months earlier, it had boiled over into outright hostility.
She saw that Meacan was waiting for her to continue and cleared her throat. “I wished to make a visit home, but as the Company’s present negotiations with the Ottomans require my husband’s full attention, he has not accompanied me.” She forced a smile. “But tell me about yourself.”
To her relief, Meacan appeared eager to expound upon the past two decades of her life. She had been married and widowed twice. Her first husband had been an actor, her second a printer. From her first marriage she had a son, now sixteen and apprenticed to a clockmaker. Though, she added good-humoredly, he had inherited from his father a mind both quick and quickly distracted, and she would not be surprised if this time next month he’d turned his attention to a new profession. She asked after Cecily’s family. Cecily explained that her parents had both departed the world peacefully, and that as their only child, she had inherited her father’s estate upon his passing.
“And the gardens?” asked Meacan, after offering her condolences.
“The steward informs me they are well tended and more beautiful every year,” said Cecily. “It has been a long time since I saw them myself. When we are in England, we make our home at my husband’s estate in Lincolnshire.”
Her words recalled them to their present circumstances. Meacan fluttered a hand to indicate the house enclosing them. “Why have you come here?”
“I wrote to Sir Barnaby,” said Cecily. “To ask if I might consult his cabinets. While I was in Smyrna, I made a small collection of plants, many of which I cannot identify with any certainty. I understand his repository of dried specimens and botanical books to be among the most comprehensive and well ordered in the country.”
“Ah.” Meacan’s eyes, a changeable green, twinkled with cheerful mockery. “So you are one of them.”
“Them?”
Meacan tucked her chin, narrowed her eyes, and pressed her lips together in a caricature of Sir Barnaby. “The collectors,” she intoned. “The noble scholars. Finding God’s Truth in the veins of leaves and scales of lizards and colors of shells. Arranging them all into little piles. Giving them names no one can remember.” She relaxed her expression, returned to the desk, and tapped a finger on a half-finished sketch. “Not that I resent it. You enthusiasts keep the poor artists employed.”
Cecily connected Meacan’s words to the pencil shavings and the paintbrush. “You’re an illustrator?”
“A sought-after illustrator,” said Meacan, with pride. “Currently in Sir Barnaby’s employ. He intends to publish another catalogue of his most wondrous wonders.”
Cecily glanced around her at the room. Like hers, it was fitted with display cases, but the atmosphere here was softened by evidence of human habitation. A froth of petticoats covered a chair. A cloak and a gown hung from the corners of a cabinet, partly obscuring its contents. The items arranged on the dresser had been swept to one side to make room for combs and ribbons. “You’re staying in the house?” she asked.
Meacan nodded. “For the better part of a week already, and I’m hoping to keep the room for the season.”
“But where do you usually live?”
“I keep an apartment in Ludgate Hill,” said Meacan. “Only at present I find myself not quite solvent enough to pay the rent, so I’ve let it for the season.”
Cecily had moved to the desk and was examining Meacan’s half-finished drawing. A unicorn shell filled the page, its ghostly twirls sketched with delicate assurance. The shell itself rested beside the paper, its red label affixed to it with string. Cecily was impressed by the likeness, and said so.
Meacan assumed an affronted air. “I don’t know why you sound surprised. I told you I was sought-after.”
“The last time I saw you,” said Cecily, arching a dark eyebrow, “you were persuading me to fill our tutor’s boots with berries.”
Meacan laughed. “I have since acquired the patience and decorum of an old oak.”
Cecily was about to reply when her attention shifted to a large book lying open on the desk to a page dense with colorful illustrations. The subjects—common butterflies and beetles—were familiar to Cecily, with one exception. She bent to look at the outlier more closely. It appeared to be an insect of some kind. Each segment of its body was decorated with a different pattern in a wild variety of hues. Its multitudinous legs alternated in color, and it had three separate sets of wings. On its forehead, between two bulging and expressive eyes, was a bright blue horn, the paint of which was still wet. Not far from it, the brush Meacan had discarded rested in a blotch of blue.
“I’ve never seen a creature like this,” said Cecily, fascinated. “What is it called?”
Meacan’s expression was serious. “This,” she said, “is the alphonius barnobios bittelbug.”
“The what?”
“Ah,” said Meacan. “Perhaps you know it by its other name. The belonmia speciama mercantilia sepherens.”
Cecily, beginning to be skeptical, shook her head.
“And I thought you such an authority on Latin names,” said Meacan loftily. “The common name, then. This bug is known as the Illustrator’s Revenge.”
“Revenge?”
“Mmm.”
Cecily looked at the page again. She had assumed it to be part of a sketchbook. Now she saw that the text was printed. She flipped to the frontispiece and read the title, which proclaimed the book to be a “new and compleat” treatise on the insects of Wales. She looked at Meacan, aghast. “Are you—painting in a published book?”
“I am,” said Meacan.
“But this book is a resource for scholars.”
“It is, yes,” Meacan agreed. “And its author should have paid me for my work.” She pointed to the printed illustrations. “These are all mine. A month of labor. And not a farthing of what I was p
romised. They’re all the same, you know, the collectors. Fists as tight as buds in winter.” Her eyes dropped proudly to the glistening chimera. “Whenever I come across a copy of the volume, I make a small addition.”
“Why?”
Meacan raised her brows as if the answer was obvious. “In the hope that it will bring ridicule to the author, of course. They so dislike being ridiculed. Reputation, you know.”
The spell of camaraderie that had been cast by the chance reunion wavered. Cecily felt a rush of irritation. She had come, after a journey of two months, to what she had anticipated would be a sanctum of scholarly order, only to be greeted by a smashed fish, a curmudgeonly host, and an old friend turned defacer of books.
Meacan crossed her arms over her chest. “You aren’t going to betray me, are you? You look as annoyed as you did when I rearranged your father’s library.”
“Rearranged it? You pulled all the books from the shelves, made a small fortress of them, declared yourself a queen, and invited the hounds inside to be your courtiers.”
“As I recall,” said Meacan with a sigh, “they rose against their monarch and toppled the kingdom.”
Cecily nodded. “I am still finding paw prints on the pages.”
Meacan let out a peal of laughter. “Are you really?”
Cecily pointed to the painted bug. “Does the world not contain enough to bewilder the mind without your introducing deliberate confusion to earnest endeavors?”
“Bah.” Meacan made a dismissive gesture. “You think too highly of collectors.”
“Why should I not think highly of them?”
“Because,” said Meacan, slipping her brush behind her ear, “they are, most of them, men. Wealthy men. With obsessions. And Sir Barnaby is among the worst of them. You are to join the tour today, I assume?”
“I am.”
“Then take my advice. Keep your elbows close to your sides, and if you pick something up, be sure to return it to its exact place. Guests are not exempt from his temper. And don’t cross Martha, either.”