Sound of Butterflies, The

by King, Rachael

  ‘But who would believe you, sir? When you all lied about her adultery?’

  Thomas wavered for a moment, and the gun drooped in his hands.

  ‘Yes, I am indebted to you, my accomplice.’

  ‘No!’ Thomas was crying now, and his hands shook again. His shaking finger moved to the trigger. Then he heard a crack and felt a blow to his head. His vision went black for a moment and he found himself on the ground, on his knees, the gun fallen to the floor. A hand reached out to pick it up.

  ‘Mr Edgar,’ said Santos. He beckoned him closer. Thomas, realising it was all over, nodded, feeling his throat contract and a sigh escape like a whistle. He crawled along the ground towards the man’s hammock. His wet clothes stuck to him, making his movements sluggish.

  ‘You and I need to have a little talk. Antonio took the liberty of booking you a passage home before he left Manaus. You leave in two days, which gives you just enough time to go back and gather the possessions you seem to have left behind at my house in your hurry to leave. Please don’t say anything.’ He raised a hand. Thomas had no intention of speaking. He couldn’t have if he tried. ‘Antonio has written to your agent, Mr Ridewell, is it? He should be there to meet you at the other end.’ He paused. His skin was sallow and a sore on his neck looked like a burn from a hot poker. Thomas felt a small satisfaction at this; he hoped it caused the man pain. Santos went on. His voice was low and menacing. ‘I like you, Mr Edgar. You remind me of myself when I was your age. Go home to your pretty wife and have a family. Tell them stories about your wondrous butterfly. It doesn’t matter that you didn’t find it — make it up. I don’t know exactly what it is that you think you have seen here, Edgar, but if I were you I would stay very quiet once you get back to England. After all, your friends have chosen to remain here. You wouldn’t want anything to happen to them.’

  Antonio appeared at the door and Santos gave a nod of his head.

  ‘Here now. It’s time for you to go. I wish you all the best, Mr Edgar.’

  Antonio, a bag slung over his shoulder, walked behind Thomas as they left the camp and moved towards the river. The rain had stopped again. He could feel the stares of the other men — Ernie, with Lillie, who must have returned with Antonio, by his side, his hand on the waist of her bright white dress as she spun a parasol; George and Pedro. Thomas stared at the ground as he walked, not quite believing that he was still alive, that he was escaping with his body intact, with only a bit of blood crusting in his hair. Antonio held his elbow when his step faltered. A yellow and black swallow-tail flitted in front of them and he gave a cry and lunged for it, only to find it was nothing more than a female torquatas, black with yellow spots, a mistake he had made before. His heart collapsed. His butterfly. His Papilio sophia. How he had betrayed it. It had all been for nothing, and so many were dead because of him. His silence had killed Clara, and it had killed John. Now, it would save his friends.

  Thirteen

  Richmond, June 1904

  Sophie awakes with her feet throbbing. She pulls back the sheets to look at them in the weak morning light. Her nightgown and legs are filthy with dirt and soot, her sheets smeared black and gritty. Blisters bubble on her soles, the skin tight and red, but they could have been much worse, considering she was trying to put out a fire with them. She curls herself into a ball and closes her eyes again, remembering the dark shape of her husband at the window, his yell that echoed around the garden. This day, everything has changed. When she gets up, nothing will be as it was, and for now she’s not sure if this is a fact to be celebrated or dreaded. The longer she stays in bed, perhaps, the longer she can put off finding out.

  His first words, after that first yell, were He killed her. They had lain crying in each other’s arms after that, then he had carried her upstairs and put her to bed. Had he spoken again after that? She does have a vague memory of him murmuring to her. Afterwards he went downstairs and she heard him outside, dragging his crates back inside.

  He killed her. Who was he? The woman he referred to could only have been that woman — Mr Santos’s wife. But who had killed her? And why? For having relations with Thomas? This might be true. Was this why Thomas had been struck mute? She supposes he could be feeling terribly guilty about it; that his actions led to her death.

  There is a soft knock at the door.

  ‘Thomas?’ She sits up.

  ‘Only me ma’am,’ says Mary, coming in with tea on a tray. She sets it down on the bedside table. Her face is bright. ‘You’ll never guess … or maybe you will. But the master —’

  ‘He spoke to you?’

  ‘Yes! I got such a fright. He came and asked me to bring you tea in bed. Said you weren’t well.’ A look of concern fell over her. ‘Are you feeling all right?’

  Sophie sighed. ‘Yes. Oh, I’ve only done something silly to myself. I’ve just burned my feet.’

  Mary is clearly shocked but too polite to ask her why. ‘Should I send for Dr Dixon?’

  ‘No … actually, yes. I’d like him to see Mr Edgar as well.’

  Mary looks at her sideways. ‘And isn’t it good news? That he’s speaking?’

  ‘Yes, Mary. It’s wonderful.’ She manages a wan smile. If only she could enjoy it. But she senses that they have a long way to go before they have a cause to celebrate.

  After Dr Dixon has left, Sophie finds she can still walk, if a little painfully, on newly bandaged feet, but he has told her to stay off them for a few days, so she returns to bed. Thomas had his wounds examined in the privacy of his own room and when the doctor came in to see Sophie, he smiled warmly at her.

  ‘You must be very pleased, Mrs Edgar. His wounds have healed nicely and we had a conversation. He seems much more alert and present. I wouldn’t say he was verbose, but he answered the questions I had for him.’

  ‘And how did he seem otherwise?’

  ‘Fine, fine. It’s a wonderful start. He still seems very nervous, and I wouldn’t call him completely healthy just yet, but I do believe he is recovering, and I’m sure you have yourself to thank for that. You must have cared for him well.’

  Sophie nodded, but didn’t say what she was really thinking — that it was her own act of madness and rage that brought him back, not her kindness.

  Now she lies in bed and waits for Thomas to come to her. Mary has changed her linen, trying to hide astonished noises at the state of her sheets, and it is cool against her skin. The day is muggy and a starling’s song drifts through the open window. A motor purrs past and horses’ hooves ring out on the road.

  Eventually there is a tap at her door.

  ‘I was beginning to think you wouldn’t come,’ she says.

  Thomas shuffles forward. ‘I nearly didn’t.’ His voice is husky and he clasps his hand to his neck as if these first words hurt him, like beetles scratching inside his throat.

  ‘Come closer,’ she says, and pats the bed. He sits down. ‘How are you feeling?’

  ‘Dreadful,’ he says. ‘What you’ve endured becuase of me. I’m so sorry.’

  She doesn’t know what to say, and they sit in silence for a moment. She wants to ask him about the woman, about what can have happened to him to make him this way. But she hasn’t had an answer from him before now — what makes her think she’ll get one just because he is speaking?

  ‘Your butterflies,’ she says at last. ‘The fire …’

  ‘Don’t,’ he says. ‘There’s no harm done. God. I drove you to that. I’m sorry.’

  She nods without meaning to, and chews on her top lip. ‘Thomas … darling. What on earth was going through your head when you wouldn’t talk to me … to anyone?’

  ‘I don’t know. It’s so hard to explain. I wanted to, so many times. Even to write things down … you won’t believe how many times I started to, when I was alone in my study. But I simply couldn’t. There’s no other way to describe it. It was as if my tongue didn’t work, or my hands, when it came to writing. Something in my head told me that if I opened my mouth, I wou
ld say terrible things, that people would get hurt, that I would confess to a crime I hadn’t committed. I was so scared of what I would say once I started —’

  ‘Like what? What happened to you?’

  He hangs his head and shakes it. ‘I still can’t,’ he says. Then he stands and apologises yet again, before making for the door.

  ‘Thomas, don’t walk away!’ She can’t believe they have come this far, only to have him run away from her yet again. But this time he stops. He stands by the door, fidgeting with his fingers on the door handle.

  ‘Please,’ she says. ‘Come back.’ She tries to keep the desperation from her voice, but can hear the whine. ‘You don’t need to tell me everything at once. Just what you’re comfortable with.’

  He looks at her like a child through his fringe, which has flopped over his eyes, contemplating her offer, before nodding and taking small steps back towards her.

  And so it is that Sophie learns about Clara Santos; the drug Mr Santos tricked Thomas into smoking and the effect it had on him; his last desperate attempt to find the butterfly before he gave up in despair. The loss of his friend John, and the danger his other two companions could now be in. He also tells her about the murders — of the newspaper man, Captain Arturo and the poor Indians — but he spares her the details.

  Part of her wants to reach out and pull him close, tell him that nothing is his fault, comfort him. But the thought of him with that woman stops her. For now.

  He sits in a chair, looking away and speaking in a low, cracked voice. Sometimes he has to stop talking as he bends his head and sobs.

  ‘And then?’ she keeps saying. She wants to keep him talking, for fear that if he stops, he will stop forever. On one level she is triumphant that he is on the mend. Her patience and perseverance have paid off. She also knew all along that whatever caused his muteness might be something she didn’t want to know about. And she was right. It hurts, this knowledge he has been carrying around with him. It hurts both of them.

  After he finishes speaking, it is duty that moves her towards him, makes her take his hand.

  ‘Why didn’t you write to me of any of these things?’

  ‘I couldn’t. I didn’t want to frighten you — and besides, I couldn’t voice my suspicions of Santos. It would have been too dangerous. And …’ He looks at the floor and his voice drops to a whisper. ‘… I was ashamed of my behaviour.’

  Sophie just nods at this, surprisingly devoid of emotion. And so you should be, she thinks. She is hard now; these things bounce off her like hailstones on the road. She should have known when his letters stopped that something was amiss. The last one she had from him was so thin, as if all his self-censoring left him with nothing to say.

  But what can she do? She can’t leave him — what a scandal that would create! People would start speculating, prying … But she has vowed not to worry about what others think, to act only in the interests of herself and her husband. So much of what hurts comes not from the fact that he has betrayed her, but that he is a man capable of betraying her. In other words, he’s not the man she thought she married. She knows what men are, women too, but she somehow believed that she and Thomas were different: that they truly loved each other and could never hurt each other. This is what she will now have to grieve for — the Thomas who never really existed. She will have to learn to love this new Thomas, who looks like the old one but more aged, more hollow. Even his hands feel colder when he takes hers, his eyes set further back into his skull. A different man indeed.

  Two days later, Charles Winterstone pauses outside his daughter’s front door. He has not warned Sophie he is coming, and he wonders if she will even be at home. The maid answers the door, eyes wide with fright at seeing him. As he crosses the threshold, broken tiles in the entrance hall crunch under his feet. They should get somebody to repair those, he thinks, before the others become scratched and ruined.

  Mary shows him into the drawing room, but when she disappears to fetch Sophie he walks to the parlour. Through the window, he sees his daughter outside in the garden, holding a basket of cut roses. She wears a gardening hat with a veil concealing half her face. He sees a hand, encased in thick gloves, go to her mouth as the maid approaches and speaks. Sophie’s head darts about, looking for what he can’t imagine. A small groan escapes his throat. There is something in the gesture that reminds him of Martha, who had a habit of looking everywhere when she was upset, as if the answers to all her problems lay in the flower bed, or under the table. He can’t help it: every time he thinks of his wife, even twenty years after her death, he feels a gaping hole in his stomach like hunger. He had always been too close to her. She was taken away from him so early in their marriage, before they had had a chance to become bored with each other, before age thickened her waist and pinched her face, before she had a tribe of children to tend to and before she became a hostess so seasoned that she lost all joy for entertaining. Before they ran out of things to discuss at breakfast.

  When she died, the house had descended into iciness. The nanny and the housekeeper tiptoed around him, barely raising their voices above a whisper, and he became used to the quiet. He even fancied he could hear his wife in the silences between the soft closing of a door or the shuffle of Nanny’s feet on the stairs. He would stand in Martha’s beloved garden and listen for her in the wind that rustled the overgrown roses.

  He sees a picture in his mind of Martha in her garden, dressed in exactly the same manner as his daughter is now, while the young Sophie squats in the dirt, getting herself far too dirty for a good little girl. Martha laughs at her, turns her back to her and waves a red rose at her husband.

  He knows that he left Sophie alone to deal with the loss of her mother; he should have been there for her. But she needed to learn independence. He would far rather he had never been close to Martha than have his heart buried with her. He wouldn’t wish that on anybody, least of all his own flesh and blood. Nobody should love so hard and have that love taken away.

  ‘Father?’ Sophie is in the room with him now, removing the pins that hold her hat on, pulling the hat off her head and grasping it tightly. Affection bubbles inside him like boiling toffee but he dampens it down.

  ‘Hello, dear,’ he says. ‘I was just passing.’

  She eyes him suspiciously and he drops his head. She becomes more like her mother every day.

  ‘Actually …’ He gestures to the chairs by the window. ‘There is something. Can we sit?’

  ‘Of course. Mary?’ Mary appears and takes away her hat and gloves.

  Sophie smoothes her hair down as she perches on the edge of the chair.

  ‘There’s no easy way to say this.’ He has become hot suddenly and fights the urge to loosen his tie. ‘I know about Thomas, Sophie.’

  Sophie collapses back into her chair with a sigh. She is relieved, he supposes, that she no longer needs to keep the secret from him, as if the lie has kept her tightly coiled.

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘It’s not a secret any more, is it? Doesn’t the whole of Richmond know?’

  She shrugs. ‘And Kingston now, too, I see.’ Is she angry with him?

  ‘Where is Thomas now? Is he in bed?’

  ‘Come and see for yourself.’ She pushes herself up and stands over him. He has no choice but to rise also and follow her into the hallway.

  She knocks at a closed door — two raps: one, two — but doesn’t wait for an answer.

  ‘There’s someone here to see you,’ she says to the room, and when Charles enters, he sees Thomas sitting at a desk. The air is heavy with a chemical smell, which reminds him of his school days, mixed with dust. Thomas is surrounded by piles of papers, several inkwells and stacks of small boxes. Charles glimpses a flash of colour in the dreary room — a pink and white butterfly, and a pallet of paint beside it, with a jar of dirty water holding a paintbrush.

  In the corners of the room, dust creatures crouch, undulating in the draught from the open door as if ready
to pounce. Thomas has not yet looked up, and Charles pokes discreetly at a book on the shelf next to him. It moves, leaving a ghost image of itself below.

  Finally Thomas looks up from his work, and Charles crosses the room to greet him. The young man stands reluctantly. He stares at the hand Charles has extended before raising his own slowly and offering it. His hand is surprisingly rough, like a gardener’s, dry and papery. Charles examines his face for signs of the violent nature Fale described to him, but Thomas’s eyes are more timid than dangerous.

  ‘Nice to see you again, Thomas,’ says Charles. ‘We won’t keep you from your work.’

  ‘Not at all,’ says Thomas, and Charles drops his hand in surprise.

  ‘Good God. But I thought …’ He lets his voice trail away.

  Sophie places her hand on her father’s arm and begins to steer him from the room.

  ‘I know what you thought, Father. We’ll leave you now, Thomas.’

  Sophie is walking awkwardly as she leads him back into the parlour, as if on hot coals.

  ‘Are you all right? Have you hurt yourself?’

  ‘It’s nothing.’ She waves him away and sits down. ‘Too much gardening. As you can see, Father, Thomas is quite well.’

  ‘Well then, tell me. Tell me why it is that I heard otherwise.’

  ‘Who told you?’

  ‘A Captain Fale came to see me. I believe he is a friend of Thomas’s. He was most concerned for you both. He said Thomas … I know this sounds extraordinary: he said he was mute. Not speaking. And violent, too. He feared for your safety, in fact. He enlisted my help to have him sent to … to hospital.’

  ‘Did he now?’ Sophie presses the back of her hand to her mouth, thinking. ‘I see. Well, I’ll tell you, Father, he was ill when he returned, and I was rather worried about him, but as you can see he is much better now. As for his being violent, that’s preposterous! You know Thomas. You know how gentle and kind he is.’