The Lady of the Butterflies

by Fiona Mountain

  Richard seemed quite unable to stop his eyes wandering from my face to the fullness of my breasts, so that I hesitated before opening my shift in front of him. But Forest could smell the milk and began to nuzzle and root with his open mouth for my nipple, then to wail with impatience.

  Richard looked down at him with a sudden sweet smile. “I never thought Edmund had it in him to father such a lusty child.”

  I thought with utter dismay how I was as lusty and greedy as my son. Richard had kissed me, and even if he had made love to me, I knew it would never sate my longing for him, not at all, but would only make me want him all the more. I had prayed for forgiveness and believed my prayers had been granted, but oh, how terrifyingly easy it would be to fall again. Was it always to be like this, every time I saw him? Was there to be no peace at all for either of us?

  I bent my head low over my baby, my cheeks burning with a mixture of shame and longing and utter panic. “Our marriage has been blessed,” I whispered.

  “Edmund is a fortunate man. I would think myself the most fortunate man alive had I found such a pretty little mother for my son.” The others had moved tactfully away from the bed to allow Forest’s sponsor to get a better look at him. Richard leaned closer and with one slender finger pushed back the blanket as if to better study my baby’s face. The lace cuff of his shirt brushed against the inside of my wrist like a caress. “What would a son of ours be like, I wonder?” he whispered, so quietly that nobody but me could hear, his eyes seeking mine. “Would his hair be black as night like this one, or golden as the sun, like yours?”

  “We shall never know.”

  “Is that a note of regret I detect in your voice, Nell?”

  I should have come back instantly with a retort to let him know he was in danger of overstepping the limit of permissible baptism banter, but I could not do it to him. There was a quiet desperation about him, as if he was barely holding himself together. One small push and he would fall to pieces. It seemed to make him revel in the risk he was taking, in talking to me this way in a crowded room, and I felt the safest thing for me to do was to play along. Or at least that is what I pretended to myself I was doing. “You can never get a son on me, but you can at least kiss me,” I murmured lightly. “That is what is done at these occasions, after all. Everyone here has kissed me and so far you are the only one who has not. It would be entirely in order.”

  “Forgive me,” he said a little harshly, as if he did not want to be flirted with. “This is a new experience for me. I have not attended many baptisms. Indeed I have seldom been with a lady in her bedchamber without covering her skin with kisses.”

  I felt my own skin tingle, as if it had been sprinkled all over with icy water. It was with a stab of my own torment now that I imagined those other ladies who had lain naked with him, who had tasted what I could never taste.

  “I’m curious,” he said abruptly. “How long must you remain abed?”

  “One month. Until I am churched.”

  He smiled, bit his lip. “Until then, you are still impure?”

  “I am not a Jewess, Richard. I don’t need cleansing. Only to give thanks.”

  As he moved closer to me still, as his lips brushed against my hair, I breathed in the scent that emanated from his clothes and his black curls, a faint mix of masculine sweat and horses, overlaid with sweet cologne. I felt his breath on the nape of my neck, on the soft lobe of my ear. If there was ever a girl in need of cleansing, it was me.

  I tilted my head closer, toward his mouth.

  He drew back.

  I had to bite my own lips to stop a little moan escaping from my throat.

  “I shall not kiss you again,” he said quietly, and it felt as if the world had suddenly gone very dark, so dark that if it had not been for my little son, I might as well have closed my eyes and never opened them again.

  MY MONTH OF PRIVILEGE after bearing my child was at an end. But when it came to the matter of how it should end, to whether or not I should be churched, Edmund had me all wrong yet again.

  “I see that, now you are mistress of this house, you choose to reject every principle and value upon which you were reared. Surely a progressive little spirit like you wouldn’t want anything to do with such a ritual? Surely you can’t go along with the view of childbed taint, that there’s something loathsome in the natural birthing of a child? My father was not the radical yours was, but even he saw churching as heretical Popish foolery that mocked God.”

  “Oh, Edmund.” I groaned in exasperation, pulled a pillow round to the front of me, clasped it as I threw myself back against the rest. Then I glanced at him out of the corner of my eye as he stood beside the bed with his mug of small ale. I did not want to argue again. “D’you know, for someone so seemingly even-tempered and set on harmony, you can be mighty quarrelsome and opinionated?”

  “You’d like a husband you could lead like a bull by the nose, a man with no mind of his own?”

  “No. Not at all.” I cuffed him playfully with the pillow. “I like a good debate very much. I am progressive, as you say. Which is why I want a churching.”

  He reached down and took the pillow off me, carefully set it aside. “You’re all for discarding the old and embracing the new. But there’s nothing new about churching, you know. It was restored to the churches with the King’s restoration to the throne. Restored, not invented, mark.”

  “Resistance to it was one of the surest signs of Puritan feeling before Cromwell, before the war,” I added. “I know all that very well. I don’t need a lesson in history, thank you very much. But I am too young to have known the time before the war, as are you. It may not be new and different to the world, but it’s new and different for me. I’m ready to walk out into our bright new age, but all the time I’m held back in the shadows. First by my father and now by you.”

  “I am sorry you feel that way.”

  “I just want to be like everyone else, for once.”

  He laughed. “You have a damnably odd way of showing it.”

  “In some things, at least.” I demurred. “It’s the current law and custom to be churched and for once I want to go along with that. That’s all.” I took Edmund’s hand, drew him down to sit on the bed beside me. “I don’t see it as a blasphemous ritual but a joyous occasion, a time for thanksgiving.” I held his hand against my heart. “We have so much to give thanks for, Edmund,” I said. “I was so very afraid, so very sure that I would never get to hold our son in my arms, that he would be taken from us.” I said it as an affirmation, to remind myself. “I want to celebrate Forest’s life.” I glanced across at his crib. “I want to celebrate being alive, being a mother. Being your wife.”

  “You are my wife, but why is it we want such different things?” Edmund said, wearily. “I had hoped we would pull together, that we were yoked as close as two oxen at the plow, but so often these days you pull one way and I pull t’other.”

  I lowered my eyes so that he would not see that, though it saddened me, I knew it to be true. But it need not be, it must not be. I looked back at him suggestively. “Once the churching is over, you need no longer be excluded from my bed,” I said.

  “Won’t it sour your milk if I lie with you?”

  “Oh, I don’t believe that nonsense. And I don’t believe Forest would care too much anyway. He’s far too greedy to be so particular.” I let my eyes linger on Edmund’s kind face. “I shall be as a virgin again, your bride again. It will be like our wedding night.”

  “You mean, when you ran away from me while I was sleeping, as if you couldn’t bear to face me in the cold light of day?”

  “Dear Edmund, that is not how it was and it’s not how it will be this time.”

  He waved his hand in a resigned gesture of capitulation. “I lack the will to stand against you. It’s far too tiring. Your victory again.”

  “There’s no battle between us, Edmund.”

  He stood, kissed my nose end. “Aye, only because I always surrender.”<
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  I smiled. “That’s how you used to talk before we were married, remember? When you were shy with me, I think.” I quoted from the letter he once sent me. “Now that I have stormed the cherry bulwarks of your sweet mouth, I am convinced I may gain your surrender.”

  “You ridicule me?”

  “No! No, not at all, you silly goose. It’s just that I read your letter so often, I learned every word of it by heart. I treasured it and I’ve still not forgotten it.”

  “You are not so very different from your father, you know,” he said thoughtfully. “You are a little fighter. You fight for what you believe in until the very end, don’t you?”

  “Is nothing worth the fight to you?”

  “I would fight for my family,” he said with all the touchingly protective pride of a new father. “I would do anything for my son, and for you.”

  I cocked my head. “Anything?”

  He gave me a wry smile. “If it is what you really want, I’ll send for Mother Wall right away.”

  I caught his hand as he stood. “Edmund, tell me you don’t really mind if we do this?”

  He beamed at me. “I don’t really mind.” He kissed my hand. “You are a rebel, Eleanor Ashfield. I am not, and so I do admire you for it.”

  AS MY MIDWIFE, Mother Wall organized my churching, and when the day came, it was she who escorted me to the church. I wore a new gown of creamy silk with a stomacher decorated with seed pearls, and we were followed by a gaggle of wives and mothers, all wearing their most fashionable outfits. We walked arm in arm and giggled and chatted and were truly as bawdy as wives at a gossiping.

  In view of the whole congregation, I was led by my attendants through to the main body of the church, to the most prominent benches covered with the kersey churching cloth. As I knelt at the altar, to be sprinkled with holy water, and as I let the droplets of water fall upon me, I bowed my head and closed my hands in prayer. I prayed silently that the blessed water from Tickenham’s springs would cleanse me, not from the stain of childbirth but from all shameful desires and impure thoughts. I prayed with all my heart that I could be a good mother to Forest and a good wife to his father.

  The minister recited the psalms and spoke of my deliverance from the peril of childbirth.

  Oh, it was so lovely to be out of seclusion at last, to return to normal life, and it was nice to be the center of attention with all eyes upon me. I felt special, that this was a very special day. As my wedding day should have been. It was a new beginning, this baby our pledge of love.

  I looked across at my husband, who rocked our son in his arms, shushing to quieten him when he wriggled and whimpered and started to look for yet more food and root around against Edmund’s brown brocade waistcoat, little head bobbing and mouth opened like a baby chick. Edmund stuck his little finger into it just as I had shown him how to, and Forest started to suck. They made a pretty picture and it occurred to me that Richard might not have made such a devoted father to my children. I vowed before God to try very hard to be as good to Edmund as he was to me. We had all been spared and I would strive harder to show my gratitude.

  When we’d all gone back to the house and eaten our venison pasties, I left the women’s room and went to seek out the gentlemen in theirs. Bawdiness was as much in order at churchings as it was at baptisms and this time I would turn that practice to good use. In my heart I was as brazen as an orange girl waiting for custom outside the doors of the theater, but with my eyes lowered to the ground and my quiet step, I sought to appear chaste as an angel, come to steal a soul in its sleep.

  Inhaling an intoxicating fug of pipe smoke and brandy fumes, I walked straight through the men without once looking at any of them. I ignored their ribald comments as I went up to Edmund and took hold of his hand. “Excuse me, gentlemen,” I said, looking only at Edmund. “But I have missed my husband. I have more need of him this night than do you.”

  Edmund appeared shocked, a little embarrassed, but I could tell he was also aroused by my boldness. I drew him gently toward me, and then I turned and, still holding him by the hand, led him back through the lewd laughter and cheering of his friends.

  Mr. Merrick clapped him on the back. “I do believe you’re blushing, dear fellow.”

  I imagined that was true, since Edmund still blushed remarkably easily, but I didn’t look back to see. I didn’t look at him until I had him in the chamber, with his back against the limed wall.

  “My wife, what has come over you?” he whispered thickly. “You are so thankful for being a mother that you want me to make another child on you tonight?”

  I stood up on my tiptoes as I always had to do if I wanted to kiss him, and he bent his head so that we met halfway. I slid my hand up under his shirt and walked my fingers up his smooth chest, let my palm rest flat against his hot, damp skin. For once his heart was racing much faster than mine. “If you do,” I said, “I promise that this time I will still be close beside you when you wake.”

  Summer

  1678

  The sunlight was sweet and golden as the best cider, and it was the time of year when every lovely day was a bonus that could not be wasted. The air already smelled of wood fires and of distant rain. Humming a happy tune to myself and to Forest, I carried him down onto the moor straddled across my hip, butterfly net over my shoulder. My black lead pen and notebook were tucked inside my corset, along with a little book of psalms. I didn’t have enough hands to bring a cushion of pins and a pine collecting box, so I had reverted to my original method of pressing specimens between the pages of a book. Since my Bible was also too big and too heavy, the psalms would have to do.

  At nine months, Forest was growing heavier by the day, but I’d always had strong arms and legs and lungs from rowing and walking and riding, and it was no great effort to carry him, even on such a warm day. Edmund had gone on a visit to his father and brother in Suffolk and I had stayed behind, hoping to have some time to please myself. I hadn’t quite accepted that now I had a baby there was no such thing unless I entrusted him to someone else’s care, which I could not bear to do, not even for a little while.

  On the far side of the moor was a little group of roe deer, half concealed in the long grass, and I stood and watched them grazing, glad to be given a glimpse into their private and secret lives.

  Forest wriggled and I set him down amidst the buttercups and sat beside him. There was no point going all the way to the river. All summer I had been trying to show him the otters, but he was never quiet or still for two seconds and they understandably kept well out of our way.

  I laid him on his back so he could look up at the kestrels and sparrow hawks soaring above him, but he was instantly squirming to roll over onto his belly, and before I knew it, he’d be trying to chew the grass, no matter how much I told him babies weren’t supposed to eat grass. Though maybe it would be a good thing if this one did. Maybe it would help to satisfy him, since nothing else seemed to.

  I sat cross-legged and scooped him up onto my lap, dandled him up and down, making him gurgle with delight. I dropped a kiss on his fat little cheek, rubbed our noses together and he suddenly grabbed at my hair and pulled very hard.

  “Ouch, little whelp. That hurts.”

  He blew bubbles at me with his mouth and pulled all the harder, so that I had to prize open his grasping fist and unwind my hair from it.

  “I’ll always love you, no matter how you hurt me,” I said.

  With eyes that were turning from blue now to a brown so dark it was almost black, he regarded me as if he understood every word I spoke. Then his whole body suddenly went rigid and he arched his back to free himself and be off again, so I put him back down on the grass.

  I slid my arms out behind me and turned my face up to the sun. The movement of grass snakes sounded like the rustle of dead leaves and already there was the scent of autumn in the air. Where had the summer gone? I hadn’t caught a single butterfly since Forest was born. I’d not even made one entry in my observation bo
ok. Though James still wrote to me it was with less regularity, his letters growing shorter. I’d only managed a few brief replies.

  Now Forest was tearing at a buttercup. Pity any butterfly that came near while I had this tiny destroyer with me. Why had I even bothered to bring my net along?

  “We might as well pay a visit to Mistress Knight,” I sighed. “She’d love to see how you’ve grown into such a pudding.”

  We were nearly at the Knights’ cottage when I saw it, not too far away, in an open area of sedge and reeds where the milk parsley grew. It was flying, slowly and powerfully, a spectacular sweep of yellow and red and blue. I gently deposited Forest in a soft patch of grass. “I’ll be right back, poppet,” I whispered.

  I bunched up my petticoats, kicked off my slippers and ran, slowing as the butterfly came drifting down toward me. It hovered, not quite settling, its wings aflutter, as it sucked the juice from the milk parsley. It was a fine example, the colors still luminously vivid in the bright sunshine, wings perfectly unragged. Almost before I knew what had happened it was there, unbelievably, imprisoned like a rare jewel beneath the veil of my muslin trap.

  I pinched its black and yellow abdomen carefully and swiftly between my finger and thumb, just below its head. Wings and antennae quivered a moment, then were still, outspread and undamaged, not a single pearly scale missing. A yellow stain appeared on my palm. I suffered an instant of remorse at the loss of its little life, that it would no longer flutter innocently in the sunshine. But it was outweighed by the satisfaction of having a pristine Swallowtail specimen to add to my collection, at last. I stared in wonder at the glorious Gothic, sculptured wings, the magnificent markings, and I thought only of how I would describe in a letter the thick dusting of lemon meal that gave it its predominant color. I thought only of how I couldn’t wait to tell James about my find.

  I laid it carefully inside the psalms and closed the little book, reverential as a Puritan girl should be, tying a ribbon round it to keep it shut tight.