The Botanist’s Daughter : A Novel (2018)

by Nunn, Kayte

  Achilles exploded into a gallop before she could rein him in and Elizabeth experienced terror and exhilaration in equal measure at the realisation that she had far less control than she had imagined over the solidly muscled beast. He took off like a skyrocket and with about as much accuracy of direction. ‘Steady on there, mister! Whoa! Whoa, boy!’ she shouted, her words carried away on the breeze, heeded by neither man nor beast. She curled her fingers into the horse’s mane and hung on for dear life. Her bonnet flew off, caught by the wind as they sped onwards. She barely registered the bright purple of the corn-cockle weed, the sheaves of wheat gathered into stooks, leaning like drunkards at a wedding, nor the nettles, grown several feet high along the bridleway, her stockings at least offering some protection from their stinging leaves. It was more than a mile before Achilles seemed to hear her pleas, to feel her frantic sawing of reins on his mouth, and he slowed a fraction, allowing her to catch her breath and summon her scattered wits.

  The bridleway led towards a tiny inlet, and, as if scenting the sea, Achilles sped up once more, hurtling towards the cliff edge at such a pace that Elizabeth feared the stallion wouldn’t stop in time and they would both tumble onto the rocks below. She hauled on the reins again and squeezed her knees into Achilles’ flanks with all her might until the horse came to an abrupt halt with less than a foot of ground to spare. He gave a snort and tossed his head arrogantly, jangling the bit between his teeth as if to say, Satisfied?

  Grasping the pommel of the saddle with trembling hands, she leant forward and flung her leg over Achilles’ rump, as she’d seen men do, and slid to the ground. She stumbled, muddying her skirts, but picked herself up and, seeing a nearby elm, tied the reins to a low-hanging branch. It took longer than it should have done; her hands would not stop trembling, nor her chest heaving from the effort of keeping Achilles under control.

  The crystal blue water sparkled invitingly, a million diamonds strewn on its surface, the horizon a blurred navy line in the shimmer of the noonday heat. The Cornish coastline was renowned for its treachery, with shipwrecks a common occurrence, but Elizabeth knew this tiny inlet well. Ladylove Cove, better known as Lady Luck Cove.

  She had spent much of her childhood scrambling over its rocks, pausing only to marvel at the tiny, tenacious plants that clung to its cliffside. The way down to the pebbled beach was steep, but stairs had been cut into the rocks – by long-dead contraband merchants, so the legend had it – and, happily, the going was dry. Recovered somewhat from the ordeal of her ride, she scampered down the rough steps with the grace of a sprite.

  Elizabeth didn’t stop to think what Georgiana might say if she knew where she was or what she was up to. Her older sister and her husband, Robert, had arrived from Plymouth three weeks before, too late for the end but in time for the tolling of the church bell that announced her dear papa’s death – nine times for a man, and then a further fifty-seven for the years of his life. They were likely even now combing Trebithick Hall for bounty, earmarking paintings and furniture for their own ends. Not that Elizabeth cared. The only thing of value to her was her dear papa, and all the tea in China wouldn’t bring him back. She stifled a sob. The time for weeping was over.

  In the days after her father’s death she had restlessly paced the gardens: going up and down the long walk in a daze, uncertain where or what her future might be. She had no patience for needlework or embroidery, and playing the pianoforte was out of the question. She found no solace in drawing, until then her favourite pastime. She was no longer able to help her father in the meticulous cataloguing of plants; an absorbing task that she had relished when he was alive.

  After her sister and brother-in-law had arrived, there had followed a fortnight spent mostly in the stifling drawing room reading condolence cards from visitors; some were dear to her but most she was indifferent to, a few she privately detested, and several she had never met nor heard of. Though Elizabeth was grateful for the company of her sister, who had only returned home on a few occasions since her marriage six years previously, the need to escape, to fill her lungs with salt-laced air and to feel the breeze against her skin, had become almost overwhelming. Which was why, finding herself unexpectedly alone that afternoon, she had made her way to the stables.

  For more than a month before her father’s death she had been loath to leave the house for long, venturing only briefly to the gardens for herbs to make into a poultice to try to ease his suffering. She had gone back and forth to the kitchen, much to the annoyance of Cook, to supervise the making of calf’s-foot jelly in an attempt to persuade her father to eat something nourishing. Once she had taken the carriage to Padstow, to the new pharmacist, clutching the receipt for a nostrum that her great-grandmother had sworn by, and that had cured Georgiana of a bout of illness when she was a child.

  The doctor had made his daily call, purging her father with leeches until he lay back on his pillow, face drained of colour, wracked with a terrifying cough, scarlet blood soaking his handkerchief. But it was all to no avail. Papa had consumption, and there was faint hope of recovery.

  Elizabeth struggled to reconcile the pale, weak invalid with the father she had known and loved, a man who was as strong as an ox but as gentle as a lamb with her and Georgiana. A man who chased adventure; a collector of plants who travelled the world and brought back not only exotic and unusual specimens, but also incredible stories of strange lands and peoples. She and her sister would listen, wide-eyed with wonder at his tales of ancient cities and crescent-shaped boats. They would beg him to tell them of the almond-eyed and dark-skinned women, of snake charmers, mystical healers, holy men and thieves. He would tantalise them with stories of riding on majestic elephants in the Himalayas, of Arum lilies that stank like salted fish and of juicy fruits that tasted sweeter than a kiss. And he would tickle them as he told of hissing snakes that rose up as tall as a man and hairy-legged spiders larger than dinner plates. He might have been absent for many months at a time, but when he was home he delighted in his daughters and paid them careful attention, doing his best to make up for their lack of a mother.

  Elizabeth had reached the shore, her boots slipping on stones tumbled smooth by strong Atlantic tides, before reaching the surer footing of the fine golden sand that ringed the bay. She was almost certain of being undisturbed on this wild beach; few if any came along the path she had ridden to reach it. Taking a careful look around to be sure she was unseen, she sat upon a branch of driftwood and began to undress, beginning with the new boots. They were not the best choice of footwear for riding, but she had been so anxious to be free of the stifling house that she had given it little thought. She was forced to wrestle with the buttons on her gown as she had with the boots, but after some contortion was able to unfasten the topmost ones and slip her dress off her shoulders. She loosened the binding laces of her corset, releasing her stays, and was eventually free of its constriction too. She had frequently cast off all but her underclothes as a little girl while on this beach, but never as a young woman, and she felt a powerful thrill at such an illicit and daring pleasure.

  Elizabeth cared as much for corsets as she did for convention, but she had little choice in the wearing of them, despite reading in The Times of the Rational Dress Society and silently applauding its endeavours in the big cities. ‘If only women did not have to be so constricted in their garments!’ she had railed to Mam’zelle Violette. ‘Be thankful you are not subject to tight-lacing,’ her governess had replied, unmoved.

  Finally, she was stripped down to her chemise and bloomers, and the salty air whipped through the fine cotton, both cooling and rousing her. She stretched out her arms, noticing as she did the butterfly-shaped mark on her shoulder. Café au lait, Mam’zelle Violette had called it. For Elizabeth, it was an ever-present reminder of her mother, who had the exact same mark in the exact same place – she had seen it on the painting of her that hung in the morning room.

  She felt dangerously free, as she hadn’t since she was a girl rambli
ng the shoreline with her father, searching for seashells and crabs, for tiny translucent school prawns and seaweed blisters to pop. She stood at the edge of the fizzing, hissing sea, feeling it suck back over her toes, beckoning her. She waded into the water as it frothed around her bare ankles like lace. Further out, it was darker, indigo blue and menacing, white caps indicating a strong offshore wind, but here, in this sheltered cove, on this sweltering summer afternoon, the water was as clear as gin. Elizabeth gasped as the cold reached her knees but she waded in undeterred. As it reached her chest and dragged her chemise down, swirling the fabric about her, the shock of the icy water forced the air from her lungs and froze her legs to a searing numbness. She could no longer feel her sore and swollen toes. With a determined set to her chin, she struck out until her feet lifted off solid ground and floated, suspended in the ocean’s chilly embrace.

  She lay back in the water, raised her face to the sky and closed her eyes, seeing red from the warm sun behind her eyelids.

  For the first time since her father had died, she felt truly alive.

  Chapter Three

  CORNWALL, 1886

  ‘Where on heaven’s earth have you been?’ Georgiana demanded as Elizabeth crept back into the house by the servants’ entrance. She had spent far longer at the little cove than she had intended, drying off on the beach and becoming lost in thought, trying to determine the best way to convince Georgiana and Robert to agree to her plan – the plan her father had requested she carry out.

  She wondered if they might be considering a move back to Trebithick Hall. She wasn’t hopeful; she rather imagined they might prefer the more cosmopolitan environs of Plymouth, for there was precious little society to be had in this Cornish backwater.

  Her father had never cared much for entertaining, preferring, when he was home, to keep the quiet company of his daughters and the occasional visiting scientist or explorer. Oh, there were stories of great dances and house parties, with guests journeying from as far afield as London, but that had been when her mother, Augusta, was alive. Augusta’s gay presence had touched every corner of the house, filling it with laughter and songs and music, so Georgiana had told her. Her sister, four years older, had a few precious memories of those times, and in later years would whisper stories to Elizabeth at night as they lay in the nursery; tales of a house garlanded with flowers, of serious-faced musicians performing in the great hall, and of ladies swirling in bright silks.

  Elizabeth had only been a few days old when her mother died, and after that the parties had ceased. Her father had taken longer and longer journeys to far-off lands, leaving them in the care of Mam’zelle Violette, returning with plants, gathered in his vasculum – a metal case made to be slung over one shoulder – or pressed carefully between sheets of paper, or kept alive on deck in a glass-and-zinc Wardian case, together with seeds that he carefully tended, coaxing them to grow in the unfamiliar Cornish soil. The most successfully cultivated specimens were sold to collectors for vast sums. There was a ready market for exotic blooms and her father was richly compensated for his travels, though in truth he had chosen his occupation more for love than money.

  Queen Victoria had become enamoured with the fruit of the Chilean guava that he had brought back from a journey to the Valdivian rainforest and successfully propagated at Trebithick Hall. She was said to love its strawberry-like aroma and sweet flesh, and when it was in season, parcels were routinely dispatched to the Royal household from Padstow by train. Cook made the leftover fruit into a jam that was Georgiana’s favourite.

  John Trebithick had instilled in his daughters a reverence for all growing things, and Elizabeth in particular was an avid student.

  Their father’s will had provided for both sisters, giving them equal rights to reside at Trebithick Hall as long as they should live. In the absence of male relatives, the house and the estate were to pass to Georgiana and Robert. Elizabeth was relieved that there was no distant male cousin to eject her from her childhood home, but nevertheless she was no longer sure of her place there.

  Before his illness, John Trebithick had planned another journey, this time to South America, and Elizabeth had petitioned assiduously to be allowed to accompany him. ‘Just think, Papa, how useful it will be to have drawings of the plants as well. Why, I’d say it’s practically essential,’ she had implored. ‘I would not be a hindrance, I promise you that.’

  She had dreamed of nothing else for months: how she would sketch and record the plants of the countries they visited, helping her father in his work to catalogue and examine the native flora of Chile and Argentina. But he was immovable. ‘Your place is at home, Elizabeth my dearest. The exotic wilderness is no place for a lady. I have witnessed and endured things that would make a lesser man quail, let alone a slip of a thing like you.’

  His passage, and that of his manservant, had been booked mere days before he took ill, with berths reserved on a steamship departing from Liverpool docks, its final destination Valparaiso, a port city on the west coast of Chile. Elizabeth had resigned herself to once again staying home, practising her drawing by copying those in William Hooker’s Botanical Illustrations – ‘You would do well to practise incessantly, and there is no one better to learn from,’ her father had commanded – as well as sketching from real-life examples growing in the estate’s bountiful gardens, and stitching hassocks for the parish church with churlish ill humour.

  She had been tiptoeing up the grand staircase when her sister spotted her.

  ‘Georgiana, I thought you had a headache and needed to lie down. Are you recovered?’ Elizabeth said before her sister could enquire further of her disordered state. She had managed to remount Achilles by dragging him to a nearby stile and had made it back to the stables without mishap, but she hadn’t been able to retrieve her bonnet, with the result that her long golden hair, the exact colour of ripe corn, had escaped from its upswept bun and now fell in damp disarray about her shoulders. The day had been a fine one, so she could not claim it was from a sudden shower.

  ‘I am recovered now, thank you, sister, but that doesn’t explain where you have been. We’ve been looking for you for hours. Bingley said he believed you were out in the gardens, but I searched high and low and could find no trace of you.’

  ‘Oh, but I was,’ said Elizabeth, thankful for the butler’s supposition. She wasn’t exactly lying to her sister; she had, after all, passed through the gardens on the way to the stables. ‘I was walking. We must have missed each other. Now, if you will excuse me, I really must go and ready myself for dinner. I don’t want to be late.’ Elizabeth hurried up the stairs before her sister had a chance to notice the sand clinging to the hem of her dress.

  ‘You know better than to go outside without a hat, dear one. You will ruin your complexion and then what will become of you?’ Georgiana called after her.

  Elizabeth paid no heed to her sister’s concern. She cared not a whit about preserving her porcelain skin. Indeed, as girls they had both spent much of the long Cornish summer outdoors, her father unmindful of the necessity of shading his daughters’ fair visages, and Elizabeth now bore a telltale scattering of coffee-coloured freckles across her perfect tip-tilted nose.

  Had her sister forgotten this so easily? It seemed that ever since she had been betrothed and then wed to Robert Deverell – ‘the most dashing man in all of Cornwall’ Georgiana had recounted breathlessly upon first being introduced to him – she had effected a volte-face, as her French governess would have said. No longer was her sister her carefree companion. Georgiana had become a paragon of respectability – and was fast becoming a pompous one at that, thought Elizabeth crossly.

  She had only just entered her bedroom when there was a knock on the door. She immediately recognised the gentle tap-tap. ‘Come in, do please,’ she said. ‘I’m going to be fearfully late!’

  ‘Oh, miss!’ Elizabeth’s maid had entered the room and looked mournfully at the watermarked fabric of her dress.

  ‘I know, but th
ere’s no use in getting upset over a silly gown, now is there, Daisy?’ said Elizabeth, her annoyance at being caught out by Georgiana making her impatient. ‘Besides, I’m sure that it can be fixed – Mrs Pascoe will doubtless have a remedy and it’ll soon be good as new.’

  ‘Were you out riding?’ Daisy asked.

  ‘Yes, I took Achilles down to Lady Luck Cove.’

  Daisy gasped. ‘Achilles?’

  Elizabeth grinned broadly. ‘I’m nearly as good a rider as you, Daisy.’

  Before entering service at Trebithick Hall, Daisy had grown up on a farm on the estate and ridden bareback around the fields and along the Cornish sands that bordered the land. Elizabeth, who had sometimes ridden with her as a child, knew that Daisy was a more adept horsewoman than herself.

  ‘If you says so miss, but Achilles? Weren’t you scared? He is a powerful beast.’

  ‘A little,’ Elizabeth admitted airily. ‘But it was worth it.’

  ‘You’re a braver soul than me, miss,’ said Daisy as she began to unfasten the buttons at the back of Elizabeth’s gown. ‘I think I’ll be able to fix your hair too, if you’ll give me a minute.’

  ‘It’s only Georgiana and Robert,’ Elizabeth complained. ‘But I suppose we must, for appearances’ sake.’ She rolled her eyes at Daisy. ‘Lord knows why we have to go through this ridiculous charade of dressing for dinner. It’s not as if any of us has much of an appetite lately. In fact, I don’t know why I am so anxious to be on time; it’s not as if it really matters, does it?’ she asked with a heavy sigh. ‘Does anything really matter any more?’