“You think butterflies could be similarly useful?”
“I’m sure of it. They can teach us much about the processes that have generated the diversity of life on earth. Their transformation seems to hold the key to the origins of life itself.”
“My father told me it held the key to life after death.”
“He is far from alone in that belief. Metamorphosis is the source of much speculation, particularly in the Netherlands. A painter there claims to have kept caterpillars in jars and observed the entire cycle. In his book he compares it to resurrection, the rebirth of the soul after death.”
I was elated. “There are others, in the Netherlands, who have seen this happen?”
“Jan Swammerdam has written a Natural History of Insects, which categorizes them by type of metamorphosis. He is certain worms come from eggs rather than being born from dew or cabbages, though I don’t believe he has seen an egg or even a pupa. And he also says that Adam and Eve contained all the humans that came after them, which seems a rather wild notion.”
Now I was confused.
“It’s just a matter of time,” he said brightly, as if he understood my bemusement. “There is still much to be discovered, about metamorphosis and everything else. But all is possible from the observation of nature. If we study birds and butterflies, I believe even people will be able to take to the skies one day.”
Human flight seemed an impossible but splendid fantasy. I’d thought it had been mine alone. “Do you, honestly?”
He shrugged. “Why not?”
“Your grandfather must be very proud of you.”
“He was, I think. He died in January.”
“I’m sorry for that. Both my parents are dead.”
“I’m sorry too.” He looked at me speculatively, then put his hand in his pocket and offered me a hard-boiled egg. I thanked him, peeled it, took a bite, and then he handed me a hip flask. I took a long swig and molten fire ran down my throat. My eyes watered and I screwed up my face, laughing. “What in devil’s name is that?”
“Whiskey.” Grinning, he took the flask back, swallowed a nip himself and secured the top. “I want to help to encourage a free exchange of specimens and opinions,” he said. “To build a community of scholars, with everyone contributing. If nobody communicates properly, progress will be very slow and fragmented, with nobody knowing what anyone else is doing or has discovered. To avoid duplication of effort, and in the broader interest of science, I believe very strongly that correspondence with like-minded people in other countries is as important as private study and experiment.”
“‘Many shall pass to and fro, and knowledge will increase,’” I said, quoting Francis Bacon, feeling almost as if the father of science was watching over me, guiding me.
“Exactly,” James said. “Ship’s surgeons constantly visit apothecaries to provision their chests of medicines before a voyage. It is my plan to enlist their help. If I can send them off with instructions for collecting, they will spread an interest in insects across the seas at the same time as they bring specimens back. There are butterflies in the New World that nobody here has ever seen, that we will never see in England, but this way we have access to them all.”
I could hardly believe my luck in finding this boy. He was a genius, a visionary. He made everything seem possible. My own ambitions at once seemed very limited, yet I had never felt so inspired.
“I could write to you?” he offered.
“I’d like that.”
“And will you write to me?”
“I will.” I agreed with all the wholehearted solemnity and sweet joy of a wedding vow.
WE WERE HOME. It was pitch-dark with no moon, and it was raining, a fine, windswept spring rain that brushed my face like cobwebs as Edmund handed me down from the carriage and I breathed in the familiar peaty tang of the marshes. I was tired and I was hungry and it was so good to be home.
I knew this house, with its long-standing absence of mirrors, far better than I knew my own face. It called to me, spoke to me in a way that nowhere else ever could. I knew the sound of the great hinges and the bolts of the studded oak door as well as I knew the sound of my own voice. The cracks in the flagstones were as familiar to me as the lines in the palms of my own hands. My feet directed me without the need to think. I knew how many worn stairs to climb up to my bedchamber, how many paces took me from the parlor to the great hall. I had been on a long journey, but here I was again, back where I belonged. Though Tickenham Court was now entirely Edmund’s, had passed from my father to him as if I did not count, I did not feel disoriented or displaced by that, as I had expected to. I had an unaccountable feeling that I had not really lost it at all.
Edmund looked very comfortable at the head of the long table, in the great carved chair with arms that had been polished by the repeated touch of my father’s hands. I was in the smaller carved chair, my mother’s chair, and had a very strong sense of the generations of ladies of the manor who had sat before me in this very hall. Edmund and I would eat our supper here, more a late dinner, really, since it was hot, and then we would go up the stone stairs to the bedchamber which generations of Tickenham Court ladies had shared with their lords. We would sleep together in the sturdy oaken matrimonial bed, the very same bed in which my mother and father had spent their first nights as newlyweds. There was a reassuring continuity in it all, though I felt and understood, as if for the first time, the weight of responsibility my father had always spoken of.
Edmund smiled benignly at me down the table, then went back to enjoying his meal, chewing with relish, as if he had not a care in the world, as if nothing troubled him or indeed ever would.
There was one small thing that marred my pleasure in being home. I set my fork down on the pewter plate, pushed it away, leaned back against the unyielding carved wood of the chair and folded my arms. “Do you know, I hate eel pie. I have always hated eel pie.”
Edmund glanced up at me, his mouth full. “Can’t think why. It’s delicious.”
I smiled. “Not when you’ve had to eat it at least three times a week for your entire life, it’s not. I hate eels in whatever way they are served. Salted, cured, smoked, stewed.”
“So tell the cook what you’d like prepared instead,” Edmund said, forking another generous helping. “You have governance of the kitchen now, of the entire household. This is like our own little commonwealth.”
“Didn’t you know? The days of commonwealths are over. Thanks be to God. Just because you are sitting in my father’s chair, there is no need to start talking like him.”
He grinned back at me. “You sit in your mother’s chair, yet I see you do not intend to emulate her at all. Pity. I have heard exceptional reports of her from William Merrick. It is my understanding that she was chaste and loyal as well as meek and modest. The best things a wife can be.”
I was sure he must be teasing, but still I stiffened.
Edmund did not appear to notice, or else chose not to. “My own father always advised of the benefits of marrying a young girl,” he added. “One not yet spotted or sullied, one I could shape and mold into the wife I wanted her to be. There’s no need to look at me like that.” He smiled. “I mention it only because I should like you to know that I am very content with your shape, just as it is.”
The tension left my shoulders.
He stood and walked the length of the long table, taking my hands in his and raising me to my feet, kissing my fingers with his soft lips. “We have never had a falling-out, have we?” he said. “And I do not ever want us to have one.”
That seemed a rather daunting aim, though maybe not for someone as mild-mannered as my husband. “We are bound to have misunderstandings I think, aren’t we? At least at first,” I ventured. “There is so much we still do not know about each other.”
“We have plenty of time to learn. We have our whole lives ahead of us. Our whole lives to spend together.”
“Dearest Edmund.” I looked at his open handso
me face and much of the emotional turmoil of the past few days drained away like the winter floods in spring. I just needed a little time to adjust to my new situation, that was all.
“We shall be happy here,” he said. “This is a beautiful house.” He kissed the tip of my nose, then my forehead. “It is our house now. Our home.”
I looked around the gloomy hall and an idea glinted at the back of my mind, like a solitary jewel swept beneath the floorboards. I could make Tickenham Court truly ours. I could make it beautiful, transform its Puritan austerity with brightness and comfort.
“We can hang printed calico or striped muslin at the windows,” I whispered, tentative at first and then growing bolder as fresh plans rushed at me. “We can replace all the dark oak with rosewood and walnut. We can light the rooms with great candelabra. And we can have mirrors, and padded armchairs upholstered in striped silk, and replace the rush matting with Oriental carpets. And we can buy pepper and ginger and cinnamon too, so we can eat food that doesn’t taste of marsh and peat.” I was grinning now, thinking that I could and would do it. I would work very hard to make a success of this marriage. Edmund was good and kind and I did love him. What I felt for Richard was surely just desire and lust, not love at all. And I didn’t need desire and lust to make me happy, did I? I would make Edmund happy too. “The very first thing we shall have,” I said, “is a silk quilt for our bed, stitched with all the colors of the rainbow.”
Edmund was looking concerned. “I doubt we can afford quite all that,” he said.
“But of course we can, we’re wealthy landowners. Mr. Merrick has always said so.”
“We’ve lived through enough dire and changeable times to learn that we can never know what’s waiting round the corner,” he said judiciously. “The King might make a levy on us tomorrow, for horses or arms for another war with the Dutch.”
“Then we may as well spend it first.”
“We should invest and save. We mustn’t be reckless.”
The rain had turned heavier, beating at the windows, and it was blowing a gale. It would only take a high spring tide to pile up the waters in the estuary and block the outflow of the already swollen rivers. They would burst their banks, inundate the fields and drown all the fresh grass and the bright spring flowers in their first bloom. Suddenly, I knew just how that felt. “Surely buying a few new furnishings for our marital home is not reckless?” I rested my palms against his chest and felt how steady his heart still was. I picked at a thread in his waistcoat, tweaking the stitched cloth gently between my fingers. “Besides, I’d like to be reckless, just a little. I’d like to know what it feels like. For a short while, at least.”
“I know how much you liked the trinkets I sent you before we were betrothed,” Edmund said. “I realized then you had a rather worrisome liking for material possessions. But we don’t need such folderols. We have each other. We have this lovely house and a comfortable income. We already have everything we could possibly need.” He smiled at me softly, a little shyly. “And if, with God’s grace, we were to have a child, I should have everything I could ever want.”
I slipped my arms around his back and rested my cheek against the bumpy brocade of his waistcoat. “Oh, Edmund, so would I. I want a baby too. I want your baby. Lots of your babies.”
He dropped a kiss on the top of my head. “The household accounts are in your charge now,” he encouraged me brightly, as if he was presenting me with the key to a castle. “The monthly housekeeping is yours to spend as you see fit. I daresay there’s enough to buy some spices at least.”
NEXT MORNING, I struggled with the practicalities of adjusting to my new position and duties. Mary and John were gone. Mr. Merrick had handed over all the great ledgers and account books and receipts and bills of fare, which were my responsibility now. I sat at my mother’s small writing desk, in her tiny green-paneled closet, as if I might feel her guiding presence. I felt nothing but claustrophobia, and mounting frustration and inadequacy. The ledger had been open at the same page for what seemed hours. I rubbed the tips of my fingers against the closed lids of my eyes. When I opened them again the neat rows and columns of figures swam before me worse than before.
Bess bustled past the open door with an armful of linen. “Still there, miss? I mean, Ma’am?”
“Bess, I am not a nincompoop, am I?”
“You’re the cleverest person I’ve ever met,” she said, coming to stand in the doorway.
I smiled appreciatively at her loyalty. “Bless you for that, Bess. Oh, I should be able to do this easily,” I said determinedly. “There is nothing especially difficult about it. A simple case of balancing profits from rents and the fisheries against outgoings on wages and expenses.”
“That all sounds quite difficult to me.”
I propped my chin in my hand and frowned at the ledger. I knew what to do in principle, but the practice was rather different. The real trouble was that I wasn’t overly interested, never had been, never would be, I suspected. But it was my life now. “It looks as if it does balance. We do have a small fortune, but it seems to cost as much to run this estate. And it’s up to me now to see that the larder and pantry are amply stocked with provisions, to make arrangements for meals, to make sure you and the other maids are paid.”
“Keeping house can’t be as hard as learning to read a whole book in Latin,” she said helpfully.
“It can, Bess. It is bewildering.”
“Your mother was good at it, by all accounts.”
“I know it. You don’t need to tell me again.” The servants and villagers had told me a hundred times how her gentleness had hidden formidable organizational skills. “I know she ordered the kitchen garden and the dairy and the fishery with patience and grace. I know she was always willing to roll up her sleeves and lend a skilled hand with the cookery and fruit preserving.”
“You are gentle and graceful, Ma’am, and willing and hardworking. And I am sure you can learn to be ordered.”
I laughed. “Well, right now I can’t even calculate if we can afford a new carpet.”
“Your father taught you arithmetic, didn’t he?”
“He did, but he did not rear me to be a housekeeper.”
And yet he entrusted this house into my keeping. He taught me that it was my first and foremost obligation to be a good custodian of my birthright, of my children’s inheritance, but at the same time had encouraged my interests in a world beyond mere accounts-keeping.
“You could ask Mr. Merrick to help you,” Bess suggested, tentatively.
“I could, yes. If I could put up with the I-told-you-so look on his face. I don’t need him to remind me that much good geography has done me, when what I really needed to be paying attention to was how many loaves of bread are needed to feed a houseful of servants.”
“I’d best leave you to work on it, then,” Bess quipped. “Unless I want to go hungry.”
She left me gazing longingly out of the tiny closet window, absently brushing the quill feather against my cheek. The rain of the previous night had passed, and with the typically capricious nature of spring, the sun was shining enticingly. A buzzard wheeled higher and higher in the milky blue sky. For my father this house represented my security. To me just then, much as I loved it, it felt more like a kind of imprisonment, the one thing that frightened me above all else. I groaned and laid my head down on the table, folding my arms up around me as if I feared the roof of this grand and ancient manor might fall down and crush me.
“It can’t be that bleak,” Edmund said breezily, as well he might when he’d been out riding all morning. “Mr. Merrick assured me all was in good order.”
I sat up, saw him and stared, aghast. “Good God!” Then I laughed.
“Don’t you like it?” he asked chirpily. “It’s very fashionable.”
He was wearing the most vile brown periwig.
“It just arrived with the carrier from Bristol. I ordered it last time I was there. Thought, now I am a husband, I�
�d better have one, so I look more distinguished.”
“Take it off,” I pleaded. “Edmund, I mean it. Take it off right now, please.”
“Why?”
I stood up and swiped the horrid thing off his head myself. My hands flew to my mouth. “Edmund! What have you done?”
To accommodate the wig, he had shaved off every lock of his own lovely copper hair.
I sank back into the chair. Ridiculously, I looked from Edmund’s shaved head to the ledger in front of me and a tear slid down my cheek. It splashed onto the page, instantly blurring the neat inked figures. I made to wipe it away but Edmund whipped the book from under my fingers.
“You’ll only smudge it and make it worse,” he said, with no hint of reproof, handing me a neatly laundered cloth as he sat the ghastly wig back on his bald head. “I’ll grow my hair back if it really means so much to you. Please don’t cry about it. For Heaven’s sake, it is nothing to cry about.”
“I know it’s not,” I said, hurriedly wiping the tears away. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s the matter with me.”
Edmund handed the accounts back to me.
“I don’t know what to do with them,” I admitted.
“You’ll soon learn,” he said. “You’ll be a prudent and frugal housekeeper before you know it. Here’s something to cheer you anyway.” He produced a flat, square parcel from behind his back.
“Oh, Edmund! A present!”
“It’s not from me. The carrier brought it as well. From the bookseller, I assume.”
I hadn’t ordered any books, and if it was a book, it was a decidedly thin one. But it was definitely addressed to me: Eleanor Ashfield, Tickenham Court, Somersetshire. The writing was small and crabbed. It was the first time I had seen my new name in writing and it gave me a strange feeling, made me feel like a small tributary that flows down from Cadbury Camp and loses itself in the Yeo, as it is swept onward toward the sea.
The Lady of the Butterflies Page 21