The Lady of the Butterflies

by Fiona Mountain

  “What happened to you?” I asked him very quietly, suddenly needing to know more than I had ever needed to know anything else. “In the war. Can you tell me?”

  Instantly I cursed myself and my confounded curiosity. Never had I seen those little indentations above his nose appear so defined. He looked to be in actual bodily pain, a pain that I felt as if it were my own.

  I laid my hand on his wrist. “Forgive me. I should not be so inquisitive.”

  “It is all right,” he said very softly. “I want to tell you.”

  I wished we could go somewhere else to talk, wished I could pour a glass of wine for him, and for myself, but it was so late and I could not invite him into my chamber, did not want to go downstairs to where Edmund was sleeping, and so I leaned against the door and he did the same.

  “When the Parliamentarians drove away all my family’s cattle and pillaged just about everything else, Edmund’s family saw to it that mine did not starve,” he began, almost shyly. “But when victory came for Cromwell and for the Ashfields, our estate was confiscated and that, together with punitive fines, deprived my family of any means of existence. Not that my father’s pride would ever have permitted him to sign engagements of loyalty to the Commonwealth, to submit to the authority of those he always called rebels and regicides. And so he fled from this country as from a place infected with plague.” He took a breath, fixed his eyes on my face, as if he needed something to hold on to. “My brother went with him, and my mother, sick and big with a child who turned out to be me. They were accompanied by two servants but had nothing else but the poor riding suits they stood up in. They took ship for Bruges but I was born in Antwerp, after they had endured months of grinding hardship. I do not know exactly how my brother perished, but apparently he had never been strong, and the rough sea passage and harsh conditions proved too much for him. And for my mother, who died in a miserable charity hospital. They said she had an ulcer in the gut, but I think it must have been terrible homesickness and unhappiness that did for her. She was half Irish and had lost so many people she had loved and cared for. So many.”

  His eyes had grown distant as the horizon, as if he had withdrawn into himself, into this painful past. I wanted to reach for him and bring him back but I was almost afraid to, sensed that it would be more damaging to stop him talking, now that at last he had begun. The kindest thing I could do was just to let him talk and listen to him.

  “My earliest memories are of traveling,” he said. “Always traveling. Calais, Boulogne, Rotterdam, Normandy, Brussels, Amsterdam. But wherever we were, it was always the same, always huddling in miserable lodgings and hiding from creditors. We were entirely dependent on the willingness of innkeepers and tradesmen and the keepers of lodgings to extend indefinite credit, and were doomed to wander from place to place, in search of ever-cheaper rooms and more generous hosts. We lived destitute of friends, begging our daily bread of God and fearing every meal would be our last. I seemed always to be hungry and cold for want of clothes and fuel for a fire. I still have dreams where I am cold, so cold I can never get warm. My father felt his powerlessness to relieve our distress acutely. He refused to admit that the royal cause had been defeated, but he kept away from the bitter feuding and factions, the quarreling and dueling, the endless failed conspiracies that made his unrealistic hopes swing to the deepest depths of despair. It was loss of pride and respect that upset him as much as anything, I think. He admitted to me once that for three months he had had not a crown, that he owed for all the meat and bread we had eaten the past weeks to a poor woman who was no longer able to trust him. It was that lack of trust he found insufferable.” He broke off as if something had jolted him back to the present. He reached out to my face and wiped away the tears from my cheek with his hand. “Oh, Nell, don’t cry for me. Please don’t cry. I didn’t mean to make you cry.”

  “I thought I had it so hard.” I sobbed with self-loathing. “I used to feel so sorry for myself. Because my father forbade Christmas and would not let me wear ribbons in my hair. And you . . . you . . .”

  “There is nothing wrong with wanting ribbons and Christmas,” he said very tenderly. “To my mind it is cruelty to deprive a little girl of such things, especially one as pretty as you. But then I have ever been of the opinion that Parliament men were rather cruel. When I came to England at last, it was to a once beautiful moated manor house that had been sacked and plundered and was little more than a burned-out ruin. Parliament men seemed to me more hateful than Hell, fully deserving of the Royalist vow to seek revenge by cutting a passage to the throne through their traitorous blood.”

  I was not at all shocked by the apparent malice of his words since there was none whatsoever in his voice, nothing but a weary irony that was almost indifference.

  He gave me the ghost of a smile. “And yet here I am, having spent a very pleasant evening with my good friend, the son of a staunch Parliamentarian, about to sleep under the roof of a house that belonged to a Roundhead major, tarrying late at night with his lovely daughter.”

  I sniffed, then smiled. “Something convinced you that Cromwell’s supporters were not to be so despised?”

  He ran his fingers through his black curls. “One day, when I was about ten years old, I saw an older boy flying a kite on a water meadow, very like your water meadows here. I did not see the son of my father’s onetime friend. Nor did I see the son of a Parliamentarian. All I saw was a friendly, laughing face, and bright copper-gold hair, and a kite made of red silk that soared in the wind. The boy offered to let me have a turn, without even knowing my name, let alone my father’s allegiances, and then he offered to share his bread and cheese, just as later he offered to share his fishing pole, even his new dappled pony. For years, Edmund Ashfield had everything and I had nothing.” He broke off and his eyes met mine, held them. “And still, it is just the same.”

  I saw that if I could find solace in knowing that I loved him, even if I could not have him, it was intolerable for him when he had been deprived of so much. “It is not true that you have nothing now,” I said. “You have . . .”

  “Oh, yes, thanks to a small grant paid to my father by our grateful new King, I have enough to indulge in the best clothes, the best horses and the best wine. But still, Edmund has the only thing that really matters, the only thing I really want.”

  I forced myself to say it, even if I could not bear to think of it, selfish as that was. “You will find someone else, Richard.”

  “I shall need to take a wife, but I shall not love her. Which will make me no different from many a husband, of course. Except that I shall not be able to find ease in the arms of a mistress as such husbands are wont to do, unless I close my eyes and do not look upon her face.”

  I held his eyes, as if somehow I could tell him without words that it was the same for me, just the same. But I wanted to give him so much more. I could not help the cold, hungry and friendless little boy he had been, but I wanted to comfort the man he had become, find a way to mend the wounds that had gone so deep within that little boy that they had never stopped hurting. When I was miserable after the death of my mother and sister, I retreated into happier memories, but he had no such consolation, he had nowhere to go, and I wished only to give him somewhere now, a safe, warm place, that he need never leave.

  “You would look well in Europe, Nell,” he said to me. “The buildings are as elaborate and theatrical as the paintings and music we were talking about earlier. There are churches filled with columns and curves, with painted rays of golden light and angels streaming to the clouds of Heaven. You would like it, I think.”

  But only if I could see it all with you. Only if you were there to show it to me. And that can never be.

  “Do not misjudge me,” he said. “Just because Edmund shared everything with me when we were boys, I did not expect him to share his wife. Doubtless you think me the most abominable cur for trying to seduce you, but I swear I cannot help it. I despise myself for it. I am tortured by g
uilt for it. Yet I cannot even promise I will never attempt it again.”

  “I could never think of you as a cur.”

  “I am trying to be good.” He gave me the most gentle, heartbreaking, contrite smile. “But it is not easy.”

  “No,” I said. “It is not.”

  For a moment neither of us spoke. Then he said: “I shall at least take that blanket to my friend before he gets cold, and I promise you I will not try to take advantage of the fact that his pretty wife is left all alone in her bed. For tonight at least, you are quite safe.”

  God help me, but I did not want to be safe from him. As he turned to go, I almost grabbed his hand. I almost begged him to kiss me again, to take me, to make me his. No matter my good intentions of a few minutes ago, I did not think I could go on living without knowing what it was to be loved by him. But I let him go. I did what was right, not what my heart and my body demanded. I went alone to bed, let him go to his own down the passageway. I wrapped my arms around the bolster, wanting to go to him, aching to go to him. I buried my face in the hard pillow, so that none but me should know that I had cried myself to sleep with love and longing for him.

  And when I went downstairs in the morning, Edmund was still fast asleep in the parlor chair, just as Richard had left him. The blankets were tucked around him as carefully and caringly as I would have wrapped little Forest.

  So I could not understand how Edmund seemed still to have caught a chill, which kept him huddled by the brazier all day as the snow fell softly and silently all around.

  THE NIGHT BEFORE RICHARD was due to leave, I dreamed of the first time I had carried a child inside me and had been kissed by him in the dark kitchen. I woke in the eerie blue light of fresh-fallen snow and my body was damp with sweat, on flame with desire, or so I thought when I kicked off the blankets and felt the shock of the icy air on my burning skin. I thought it was the lustfulness of my dreams that had caused me to overheat, until I realized that the sweat on my body was not my sweat, that the heat I felt was not heat from my own body. I was so hot because Edmund had curled himself around me and, though he was trembling still, his body was as fiery as a blacksmith’s furnace. The chill had passed, and it had been replaced by a raging fever. I touched his scorching brow and recoiled in horror, as if my fingers were scalded.

  “Edmund!” I shook him, gripped by a blind panic. “Edmund, wake up!”

  He looked dazedly at me through his delirium, as if he didn’t even know who I was. His lids slipped shut again as a low moan escaped his parched lips.

  I backed away from the bed, the drapes falling closed between us like a final curtain, as one word clanged its death knell inside my head.

  Ague. Ague. Ague.

  Why now? Why again? It hardly ever struck in winter. I would not let it claim Edmund too. I would save him. I would not let him die. I would not.

  I turned and fled from the room and down the corridor, to the room where Richard was sleeping. I burst through the door without seeking permission to enter and ran to his bed, threw back the hangings. He was sprawled on his stomach atop the blankets, still half dressed in shirt and breeches, with his head turned to the side, one arm flung up over his head and one knee crooked. I put my hands on his shoulders and shook him harder than I had shaken Edmund. “Richard, help me! Edmund is sick.”

  He sat up, regarded me with sleepy eyes for a moment, as if I was a visiting seraph.

  “You have to ride to London right away,” I said frantically. “As fast as you can.” I grabbed his cloak off the trunk and thrust it at him, followed by my pocketbook. “Take this. You will probably need it.”

  “What for?”

  “It is very expensive.”

  “What is?” He looked at me now as if I was a jabbering loon. He took firm hold of my shoulders and held me still, looked into my eyes. “Nell, you are not making any sense at all. What’s wrong with Edmund?”

  “A fever,” I said. “He has a fever. I am sure it is ague.”

  “Tell me exactly what it is that you want me to do.”

  “Find Robert Talbor,” I said more calmly. “The man who cured the King of it.”

  “How do I find him?”

  “Go to Dr. Sydenham on Pall Mall. He is sure to know.”

  He nodded, released me to push his arms through the sleeves of his coat and his feet in his boots. He stood and threw his cloak over his shoulders, handed me back my pocketbook from where it lay on the bed. “I have money, Nell.”

  “You may not have enough.”

  “I am sure that I do.”

  A dusting of snow lay on the ground and still came down in flurries, but I followed him out to the stables in just my shift and with no shoes on my feet, and barely felt the bite of the wind or the coldness between my bare toes. As Ned hurriedly bridled and saddled Richard’s horse, he glanced askance at me, as if to say that even in the direst distress he’d have expected me to make some pretense at respectability.

  Richard put his right boot in Ned’s cupped hands and vaulted into the saddle.

  “Ride as fast as you can,” I pleaded.

  “You can be sure of it,” he said. “Do not worry, Nell.” He dropped his feathered hat onto his head with gravitas, as if a part of him relished the chance to do me this service, had been waiting for a reason to ride to my aid. “I will be back within four days, I promise you.”

  I was so grateful to him I could have wept. I clutched at his hand for a last moment. “Godspeed, Richard. Go safely.”

  I watched him gallop away through the snow toward the church, with all my hopes and prayers resting on him, and felt quite reassured.

  This was not like before. Edmund might have sat in my father’s chair and taken his position as the head of Tickenham Court, but he was not my father. He would not refuse the Jesuits’ Powder, if that was what Robert Talbor used. Richard would fetch the miracle remedy and Edmund would take it and be cured. My father had been past his prime when he’d died, weary and disillusioned from the wars, crushed by grieving. Edmund was different. Edmund was young and strong. He had a small son and another baby expected. He had a wife who loved him. Who did truly love him. He’d said it himself: He had everything he could ever want. He had everything to live for. He had to live.

  I WILLED MY HUSBAND TO LIVE. I held on to his palsied hand as if I could stop him slipping away from me, but the feel of it sent my own hand shaking in fear. It was so icily cold it hardly felt like a hand at all, it felt as if he had died already, and his teeth rattled so hard in his head that he could not speak to me.

  I slept in a wooden chair by his bed, if I slept at all. I watched over him constantly, trying to understand his incoherent ramblings and mumbles and anticipate his every need, so he would not have to exert himself. When he was shivering with cold I kept him warm, brought rugs and blankets and made sure the fire was kept banked high. As soon as the chill passed and the heat started again, I soaked cloths and sponged his scarlet face. When his parched tongue licked at the moisture, I reached for the cider cup and trickled some into his mouth, glad just for the opportunity to have something to do. His hand, when I held it, was burning now. The sweat poured off him in waves and I brought dry sheets when the ones beneath him became quickly drenched.

  “Edmund, I cannot bear to see you suffer,” I said, turning the damp compress over to the cool side and placing it back on his scarlet brow.

  Even ravaged and weakened by disease, he had lost none of his placid acceptance. Even in his misery he did his best to smile through it. “I don’t feel so bad now, really I don’t.”

  “I know that is not true. I wish you would complain. You are allowed to, you know. I know I would in your place.”

  He squeezed my hand as his smile remained. “No, you would not. You would be magnificently strong and brave. Just as you always are. As you are now.”

  “But you have to fight this,” I pleaded. “You once told me you would fight for me and for our son. You need to fight for us now. You have to hol
d on, do you hear me?” I stroked his damp hair, which had turned the color of wet rust. “Just hold on. Richard will be here soon.”

  “Oh, aye, so long as he’s not waylaid by some pretty harlot with a fair face and fairer bosom. Or else by a not-so-fair bottle of wine that will make him forget entirely where he is going, or what he is going there for.”

  “He won’t,” I said firmly. “You’ll see. He knows how important it is that you have the powder. He promised to be back in four days.”

  “I’m sure he did. Well intentioned he may be, diligent he is not.”

  Judged against Edmund’s steadfastness, all would be found wanting, me included. “Richard will be diligent if it matters enough,” I said. “He will.”

  “So how long has it been now?”

  “Nearly five days.”

  “So already he has broken his promise.” My husband smiled wanly. “To think, my life now depends on a most undependable person.”

  BUT NEXT MORNING, just after daybreak, I heard the blessed sound of hooves clattering on the slushy cobbles and I rushed to the window. “He is here!” I shouted. “Edmund, Richard is back.”

  Edmund was dozing fitfully, his face still flushed with fever, and he did not appear to hear me.

  I ran down the stairs and outside to see Richard’s black Spanish stallion steaming in the glittering white light of sun reflected on snow. Flecks of froth were dripping from the bit.

  “How is he?” Richard asked.

  “Weakening,” I said, more harshly than I intended. “What took you so long?”