Enchantress of Numbers

by Jennifer Chiaverini

  One morning, she came to my room, where I lay staring dolefully up at the ceiling, and instead of greeting me or ordering me out of bed, she said, “Do you mind if I look out your window?”

  I didn’t want to answer, but the oddness of the question compelled a reply. “Please yourself.”

  “Thank you,” she said brightly, as if I had welcomed her graciously, as a young lady ought. From the corner of my eye, I watched as she crossed the room with the usual bounce in her step and peered out the window, rising on tiptoe to see better. Miss Clara Thorne was quite small, with glossy, dark brown hair arranged in an elegant coil at the nape of her neck, sparkling brown eyes, a pert nose, and ruby lips that usually curved in a smile. I had overheard my mother’s maid tell a footman that she was the natural daughter of a grand Scottish laird and an actress, and after her mother died of consumption when she was only two years old, her father had arranged for her to be brought up as the ward of a respected minister. In time, when she proved to be clever, her father had arranged for her to be educated as well. Although the laird apparently found her delightful and made no secret of her relation to him, she would not inherit his fortune, nor could she marry well because she was illegitimate, so she was obliged to earn her living as a nurse or governess.

  “Hmm,” Miss Thorne mused, drawing back from the window.

  She said nothing more, so after a long silence, I prompted, “What?”

  “Oh, nothing. It’s just that I thought I heard Puff singing outside, but I suppose I was mistaken.”

  I frowned, curious. “Who is Puff?”

  “Why, Puff, of course. Everyone knows of Puff.” When I merely blinked at her, bewildered, her eyes went wide. “You mean to say you’ve never heard of Puff, favorite lady-in-waiting to the Queen of Fairies?”

  “I know what a queen is,” I said carefully, reluctant to appear ignorant. “And I have eaten fairy cakes.”

  Miss Thorne put her hands on her hips and regarded me with astonishment. “Do you mean to say that not only have you never heard of Puff, but you also don’t know what fairies are?”

  I shook my head, embarrassed.

  “Oh, dear me. We shall have to do something about this shocking lapse in your education.” She held out her hand, and when I did nothing, she gestured for me to get out of bed. “Come along, now. We haven’t a moment to waste.”

  I promptly scrambled out of bed and washed and dressed, and as I ate breakfast, Miss Thorne enlightened me about the mysterious, magical folk who inhabited the most beautiful, enchanted places in England and Scotland, as well as Ireland and Wales and certain regions of France. Most were tiny, beautiful, delicate winged creatures, although others were burly, furred, and horned. Most were merry, whimsical, and kind, but some were temperamental and jealous and even savage when provoked. All were magical.

  Puff was a very special fairy, kind and beautiful, gentle and generous. She wore a gown of silver thistledown, and her wings were shaped like a dragonfly’s, in iridescent shades of silver, rose pink, and sky blue. She loved to sing and to play a tiny silver lute, and the magic of her melodious voice could comfort the bereaved, encourage the despondent, and inspire the timid.

  In the weeks that followed, I learned a great deal about fairies, about their curious ways, their magic and mischief, their habits and habitats, their trickery and tempers, and magical charms to protect oneself from their wicked brethren. Miss Thorne offered her enthralling tales sparingly, as rewards for good behavior or lessons learned, and I quickly transformed from a sullen, disobedient, angry little wretch into the most well-behaved, respectful child in Leicestershire. I learned the alphabet and the numbers from one to twenty, and when I saw how my progress pleased my mother, I worked even harder to be an obedient child and diligent pupil. If I did well enough, I hoped with no little resentment, she might pay as much attention to me as she did to the children of the working poor.

  As the winter passed, I grew to adore Miss Thorne. I still missed Mrs. Grimes, but with a wistful fondness rather than a painful ache of grief. We welcomed spring together, and Miss Thorne showed me birds building nests with twigs and vines and bits of string, and we found a wren’s nest nestled in the nook between two branches of an elm, low enough that I could see into it when she lifted me. Week after week we returned, once to discover three eggs resting inside, and before long, three hatchlings. For hours we would sit side by side on the long, soft grass and watch, entranced, as the mother bird flew back and forth bringing food to her babies. “One day they’ll be grown, and they’ll fly off on their own,” Miss Thorne told me, giving me a smile and a little nudge. “Just like you will someday.”

  I laughed, because the notion that I would ever be grown enough to fly free of my mother, or that I would ever want to, was too silly to be believed.

  Miss Thorne taught me about seeds, too, and about how they were made and how they sprouted, but she also made up delightful tales about Puff, and the queen she served, and all the other fairies of her court, which were friends and which quarreled, who did good deeds and who fell into one amusing mishap after another. There was always a perceptible shift from science to story, a lightening or deepening of her tone as the subject required, a musical lilt to her voice that was present, and then absent. I found one endlessly fascinating and the other thoroughly amusing, and as spring turned to summer, I thrived on a wholesome diet of both.

  My mother was very busy with the Infant School, so I saw her less frequently than I would have liked, but one fine midsummer day when she had come for a brief visit, she gave Miss Thorne the afternoon off and suggested I lead her on a walk through the forest and show her what I had learned about the natural sciences. Thrilled and proud, I cheerfully pointed out the birds’ nest, the tiny oak seedlings, the concentric dark and light rings in the trunk of a fallen tree, and so on. Then we strolled deeper into the wood, and without thinking, I pointed at a wide ring of mushrooms nearly three feet across. “Look, Mama,” I exclaimed. “A fairy ring!”

  She gave me an odd look. “Those are mushrooms. They are fungi, connected underground.”

  “Yes, I meant to say mushrooms,” I quickly replied.

  She frowned, bent closer to me, and searched my expression. “Where did you learn about fairy rings?”

  “I don’t remember. I think I saw it in a book.”

  As soon as I spoke the lie, I realized it was as damning as a confession. I knew my letters but could not yet read more than my own name, and even if I had seen a drawing of a fairy ring in a book, I would have needed someone to read the caption to me.

  Our pleasant nature walk came to an abrupt end. We returned to the house, where I was fed my luncheon—my mother sat with me, sipping her tea in silence, eating nothing, studying me carefully—and afterward I was sent to my room to practice writing numbers. I heard Miss Thorne return, heard her summoned to my mother’s study, and, with my little heart beating like a baby wren’s, I waited with my ear pressed to the door for the sound of her footsteps on the stairs.

  When I heard her pass by my room on her way to her own, I gathered my courage and followed. The scene before me was sickeningly reminiscent of the last time I had seen Mrs. Grimes—the wardrobe with the doors flung open, an empty satchel, a beloved nurse folding clothes into neat piles.

  “I’m sorry,” I blurted tearfully. “It’s my fault. I forgot not to talk about fairies.”

  “Oh, sweet Ada, don’t blame yourself.” Miss Thorne smiled fondly and held out her arms to me, and I ran into her embrace. “It was I who flouted the prohibition against fairy tales. That I had no idea they were banned and was unaware I was breaking a rule does not change that fact.” Her voice took on an edge as she spoke, sharp and yet amused. “It’s best that I go, because I cannot promise never to tell you another fairy tale, for you seem to enjoy them and I quite like telling them.”

  “It’s not best that you go,” I said, my voice
muffled. “Please stay. I can do without fairy tales.”

  “You shouldn’t have to.” Miss Thorne knelt so our faces were almost the same height, and she took out a handkerchief and wiped my eyes. “Now that you’re an expert on fairies yourself, you may make up your own stories, in your own mind, where they will trouble no one.”

  I sniffed and blinked at her, uncertain. “May I?”

  She put her head to one side, considering. “My understanding is the rule is against telling fairy tales, or reading them. The directive says nothing about thinking them.” She smiled and stroked my hair away from my face. “The imagination is not a dangerous thing, Ada darling—but that is as close as I shall come to speaking ill of your mother to you.”

  It was a testament to my mother’s esteem for Miss Thorne despite her failure to suppress my imagination that she allowed us to say good-bye. Once she was gone, I was so miserable I could not leave my room for two days. My mother arranged for my meals to be brought to me on a tray, a surprising indulgence that I suppose could have been a sort of apology, though not an admission of wrongdoing, because my mother was never wrong.

  I don’t know why my mother neglected to tell Miss Thorne that fairy tales, ghost stories, and the like were forbidden, when it was a matter of such grave importance. Perhaps she was so busy with the Infant School that she simply forgot. Perhaps she assumed that Miss Thorne was so well educated and intellectually advanced that she would know better than to inculcate me with silly fancies. Another mother would have explained the rationale behind the rule and instructed the otherwise exemplary nurse to heed it in the future. But it was not in Lady Byron’s nature to forgive a transgression or to offer an opportunity for the transgressor to commit the same error a second time.

  This I would eventually learn better than anyone.

  Chapter Five

  Wishing Each Other, Not Divorced, but Dead

  July 1818–January 1822

  In the aftermath of Miss Thorne’s departure, I was heartbroken and lonely, which exasperated my mother but moved my grandmother to pity. Lady Noel had been a constant loving presence in my life for as long as I could remember, and I relied upon her steadfast affection as never before. She taught me how to sew and knit, and I never felt more useful than when she allowed me to help her hem handkerchiefs for my grandfather or embroider a pretty floral design in the border of a new tablecloth. Although I still longed for friends my own age, I was grateful for the comfortable, serene, undemanding companionship my grandmother offered. She was not always striving to improve my character, only the quality of my stitches.

  I suppose that could be precisely the reason my mother did not enjoy her company very much, for my mother seemed to believe that an hour not spent in self-improvement or the forcible improvement of others was an hour wasted.

  I have called my grandmother serene, but it is true that around this time, I began to notice that my mother had a particular gift for setting my grandmother’s nerves on edge, with a pointed barb of criticism here and an artfully placed silence there. The only person who agitated my grandmother more was my father, with whom she shared a mutual antipathy.

  A year after Miss Thorne left me, Byron again disrupted our household from afar with the publication of the first two cantos of another poem, Don Juan, which was considered a brilliant comic masterpiece everywhere but Kirkby Mallory. He had again sharpened his satirical knives and carved a portion of his estranged wife to serve up to his worshipful readers and a public hungry for gossip about the Separation. This time, my mother had been transformed into Donna Inez, Don Juan’s mother, “a learned lady, famed

  For every branch of every science known.

  In every Christian language ever named,

  With virtues equall’d by her wit alone,

  She made the cleverest people quite ashamed,

  And even the good with inward envy groan,

  Finding themselves so very much exceeded

  In their own way by all the things that she did.

  Donna Inez had a prodigious memory, her favorite science was “the mathematical,” and “Her wit (she sometimes tried at wit) was Attic all, / Her serious sayings darken’d to sublimity.” She dabbled in various languages, but “Her thoughts were theorems, her words a problem, / As if she deem’d that mystery would ennoble ’em.” But she did not need words, for “Some women use their tongues—she look’d a lecture, / Each eye a sermon, and her brow a homily.” In short, my father wrote, Donna Inez was “a walking calculation; / Morality’s prim personification . . . perfect past all parallel.”

  My father’s poetic genius captured my mother’s likeness so perfectly that even the exaggerations were spot-on. Anyone who read the poem—and everyone would—could not possibly fail to recognize Donna Inez’s living, breathing counterpart, with all her flaws, perfection apparently being one of them.

  My usually serene grandmother spluttered with outrage and threatened to contact her lawyers, but my grandfather discouraged her, noting that litigation would only draw attention to the poem. It might also serve as a tacit admission that my mother saw herself in Donna Inez, which she would perhaps prefer to deny.

  To her credit, my mother tried to evaluate the poem on its artistic merits alone, noting that it was witty and eloquent, and quite entertaining, if a trifle indelicate in some places and dangerously close to vulgar in others. “Indeed, after Childe Harold, I am quite relieved,” she admitted. “It is not nearly so disagreeable as I had expected. Here, for example”—she pointed to a page—“while it’s true he belittles my sense of humor, at least he admits that I have one. And in these stanzas, the quizzing is so good as to make me smile at myself—therefore, others are heartily welcome to laugh.”

  Thus she spoke to my grandparents to settle their agitation, but a few weeks later, I overheard her confiding to a friend that although the character of Donna Inez did not trouble her, the description of the lady’s marriage did:

  Don Jóse and the Donna Inez led

  For some time an unhappy sort of life,

  Wishing each other, not divorced, but dead;

  They lived respectably as man and wife,

  Their conduct was exceedingly well-bred,

  And gave no outward signs of inward strife,

  Until at length the smother’d fire broke out,

  And put the business past all kind of doubt.

  My mother felt the sting of my father’s rebuke in another stanza in which Donna Inez “call’d some druggists and physicians, / And tried to prove her loving lord was mad;” but since he was sometimes lucid, “She next decided he was only bad.” No explanation for her behavior was offered, the narrator noted, “Save that her duty both to man and God / Required this conduct—which seem’d very odd.”

  “I have never wished Byron dead,” my mother protested to her friend in a strangled sort of voice. It sounded as if she wept, but I was listening from the hallway and dared not peek into the room to verify. “Do you suppose he wishes me dead? How could he write such a terrible thing? And I had no choice but to investigate whether he was mad. How else could I help him?”

  “Perhaps it is all a fiction. If you are Donna Inez, then Lord Byron must be Don Jóse.” My mother’s friend scornfully mispronounced the name as my father had written it, deliberately altering the emphasis to suit his poem’s meter. “That cannot be. Before the Separation his conduct was certainly not ‘well-bred,’ and there were many ‘signs of inward strife.’”

  “The poem may not be a perfect reflection of us and our marriage,” my mother admitted, “but it’s so very close to the truth that I cannot know what he believes to be true, and what he has embellished for comic effect.”

  “It is all embellishment,” her friend declared, and my mother seemed to take comfort from her certainty. Even so, she sighed and wished aloud that he would cease writing about her altogether if he could not be kind. />
  Eventually the storm subsided, at least in my hearing, but soon after we celebrated the New Year of 1820, another tempest struck. Although my family were taking greater care not to speak on certain sensitive topics in my presence, I gleaned from fragments of conversations that abruptly ended when I entered the room that my father, currently residing in Venice, was writing or had written his memoirs. Although he did not want the manuscript published until after his death, he had sent one copy to his publisher, John Murray, and a second to my mother, along with a letter warning her that although he had omitted certain “important and decisive events and passions” to avoid compromising other friends and family, he had not taken such precautions with her.

  “I could wish you to see, read and mark any part or parts that do not appear to coincide with the truth,” he told her. “The truth I have always stated, but there are two ways of looking at it and your way may not be mine.” She would find no flattery within the pages, he warned, “nothing to lead you to the most remote supposition that we could ever have been, or be happy together. But I do not choose to give to another generation statements which we cannot arise from the dust to prove or disprove without letting you see fairly and fully what I look upon you to have been, and what I depict you as being.”

  “It is his account of our marriage that will endure,” my mother lamented to her maid soon after the manuscript arrived. “It is bad enough that he derides me in verse, which I can dismiss as parody. A memoir, however—that is supposed to be fact, and that is how readers will view it, although I know it to be a highly subjective fiction.”

  “Can’t you do as he asks, and mark the parts you think are false?” Merle asked.