“It reminds me of one of the flags you see on naval ships.”
“The Red Admiral?” he said.
“Red Admiral. I like it. We should call it that.”
“And this?” He pointed to one with jagged orange-brown wings, marked with black and blue. “What would be a good name for this one, do you suppose?”
Puzzled, I leaned forward with my elbows on my knees, chin resting in my hands to think. “Hmmm. Not so easy.”
James reached out toward me and produced a little comb, like a conjuror at a fair might produce a coin from the sleeve of his coat. It took me a moment to realize he’d taken it from my hair. “It looks rather like this pattern, don’t you think?”
A curl flopped across my eyes. I pushed it away with my hand. “Tortoiseshell.”
“Tortoiseshell it shall be.”
“How do you know for sure you’ve found a different species, that it’s not just a variation?”
“There’s always much debate about species divisions. That’s why we all need to keep collecting and share our findings.”
“Will other people use those names we’ve chosen?”
“They could still be in use hundreds of years from now.”
The notion of that amazed and cheered me, the idea that there might just be butterflies called Red Admirals and Tortoiseshells flying around when we were long gone.
“Did I ever tell you,” I said, “a boy once accused me of being soft in the head for chasing butterflies.”
“That doesn’t surprise me in the least. You should see the strange looks I attract when folk see me out walking with a net over my shoulder, a pincushion round my neck, and butterflies fastened round the brim of my hat.”
I giggled. “You pin them round the brim of your hat? What a perfect place.”
“You see, only you’d appreciate that. To the rest of the world I look an oddity indeed.”
He stayed for hours and, when he came back the next week, he arrived with a posy of flowers he’d picked from Chelsea, and a draft of physic he’d prepared for me himself.
“What is in it?” I asked.
He smiled to see a glimmer of my natural curiosity returning. “Water pimpernel and marsh marigold, mainly.”
“Both those plants grow on Tickenham Moor,” I pondered. “I never knew they had medicinal properties. Something else that might be lost, then, if the land were converted from marsh into permanent arable land?”
“Well, for now they are plentiful enough.” He spooned out a measure of the physic for me before we had glasses of wine and slices of Mary’s almond tart. Then he talked to me about his work with the paupers at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital and about how he wanted to open his own apothecary shop. He talked animatedly about his group of friends who’d started meeting every Friday evening at the Temple Bar coffeehouse off Fleet Street, to talk about botany and insects. “It’s the only society in the country devoted to the study of the natural world,” he said, excitedly. “We’ve gathered together some of the greatest minds of our day and intend to formalize our club and make it a focus for promoting botanical knowledge.”
“James, you have such an illustrious circle of friends and such a full and interesting life, I can’t imagine why you’d choose to spend your precious days off with me, eating tarts in a little boarding school in Hackney.”
“Can’t you?” he asked, suddenly serious.
But as the time drew nearer for his third visit, I became convinced that he’d send a message to say he couldn’t come after all. I wasn’t sure how I’d manage a whole week without a few hours of his company, though. The physic he gave me helped heal my body, but his presence soothed my soul. He was like a window opening out onto the world. Through his bright hazel eyes I saw, for the first time in weeks, beyond Mary’s little kitchen and school, beyond my loss and my guilt and sorrow.
But he did come, and he suggested that next time we go on a butterfly-hunting expedition together. “We’ll take provisions. Make a day of it.”
“Wouldn’t you have a much better time with your friends?”
“I thought you were my friend.”
I couldn’t have felt happier if I’d been the staunchest Royalist given an invitation to the royal court on the King’s own birthday.
“So. Where shall it be? Where would you like to go?”
I remembered the pretty names of all the places he’d mentioned in his letters. Fulham Palace Gardens. Hampton Court. Primrose Hill. The lavender fields of Mitcham. “Oh, I don’t know. I can’t decide.”
He looked at me, considering. “Let’s go to Fulham Palace, then,” he said. “It’s like a scene from a romance. I think you’d like it the best of anywhere.”
“WHAT IS THAT you are reading so avidly?” Mary asked me, looking up from the table where she was crushing almonds for marchpane.
I showed her the cover of Philosophical Transactions. “It’s the journal of the Royal Society. James brought it for me. He said he thought I’d find it helpful.”
“Helpful in what way?”
“I’ll show you,” I said excitedly, feeling the familiar thrill of experiment and discovery stir in me again. I put the journal down, scooped up little Mary and carried her over to the sunny leaded window. I held up my left hand toward the light, the hand upon which I still wore the bejeweled band that Edmund had slipped onto my finger on our wedding day. I turned the back of my hand toward the glass and tilted it slowly, this way and that, keeping my eyes trained intently on the far wall. “Watch very carefully,” I whispered to Edmund’s little daughter.
“Whatever are you doing now?” Bess had been wiping the dishes. She put down the cloth.
“We are contemplating Isaac Newton’s theory of light and color,” I told her and Mary with a grin.
“You are an addlebrain for sure,” Bess muttered.
But at that moment I got the angle just right and a myriad of dancing colors, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet, were splashed across the white walls of the little lime-washed kitchen.
“Isaac Newton has proved that we are surrounded by color all the time,” I said. “Light itself is made up of a spectrum of colors.” With my thumb I stroked the band of my ring with its diamonds that were doing the job of a prism. “So you see, my little Mary, your father can still bring some brightness to our lives, even though he is gone from them.”
“It seems to me that it is James Petiver who has done that for you,” Mary said gently.
“Maybe. But do you see,” I said animatedly. “Mr. Newton has shown how rainbows are made.”
“Pity John didn’t know that when he was preaching.” Mary looked from one tiny rainbow to another. “How lovely to think God not only created light to banish the dark, but made it so beautiful, just like a true artist.”
“If experiment can reveal the components of light,” I posed tentatively, “maybe it really can illuminate the rest of God’s work. If I could only see how a butterfly is born, I could perhaps be sure that Edmund is in Heaven with my parents and my sister. I could still believe I will see them all again.”
“IT’S NOT MUCH FURTHER NOW,” James said. “Those are the gardens over there.”
We were walking along a raised path called Bishop’s Walk that ran along the bank of the Thames. To the other side of us was a wide channel of still water, uncannily like one of the rhynes on Tickenham Moor. But the land behind it was nothing like the moor. It was crowded with trees, not wispy willows, but great stately trunks, with roots that spidered the ground like the veins on an old man’s hand, beneath a canopy of enormous arching branches. “The entrance is only about a quarter of a mile away,” James said.
I slid my hand into the crook of his arm and gave him a quick squeeze. “Stop fretting about me, James. I’m not in the least tired.”
I hardly knew which way to turn my head. On one side of us was the forested garden and on the other was the river, busy with barges and tilt boats and fleets of collier ships, the skyline pu
nctuated with Wren’s graceful spires that had arisen from the ashes of the Great Fire.
We entered the Palace Gardens under an avenue of limes, and I saw then that the wide ditch was in fact a great moat which encircled the entire acreage of the grounds. It was like a scene from a myth. In front of us was a drawbridge and beyond it was the house, or palace, very old and ruinous, with battlemented towers.
“What is this place? Who lives here?”
“It’s been the summer residence of the bishops of London for centuries. The gardens are of great antiquity, have been famous for their beauty and scientific value since the reign of Queen Elizabeth. That’s a tamarisk tree.” James pointed. “From Switzerland. Over there is a cork tree.”
With my hand still resting in the crook of his arm, he led me deeper into the strange and beautiful forest.
“The trees grew even more thickly once,” he said. “Until one of the bishops thinned them. Legend has it that Sir Francis Bacon visited just afterward and said that, having cut down such a cloud of trees, he must be a good man to throw light on dark places.”
“I should like to throw light on dark places.”
“Eleanor, you could do nothing but.”
I gave his arm another squeeze. “Did I ever tell you? I was married in the same church as Francis Bacon?”
“How grand.”
“Actually, it was far from it.”
“Really?”
“‘Truth requires evidence from the real world,’ Sir Francis said. That is such a good creed. My father had his writings in his library but never could agree that there must be evidence for everything before we can believe in it . . . even before we can believe in God.”
“Do you think we can ever see evidence of God?”
“I used to think it was all around us, in the splendor of his creation. I used to think that was the very reason we must study it, to bring us closer to Him. Or that’s what my father taught me. I no longer know which of the things he taught me are true, but I have a hope that it is more than I have come to suspect.” I stopped and turned to him. “James, do you believe absolutely in metamorphosis?”
He pursed his lips. “I am as uncertain as the next man about oft-repeated claims. Experts contradict each other. The only truly reliable approach to the study of the natural world is through one’s own observations. I can’t entirely believe it without the evidence of my own eyes.”
That was not what I wanted to hear at all. “Have any of your friends at the coffeehouse even seen it?”
“They are more interested in collecting and marking one species off from another than in seeing how they are born. Though it has not yet been studied properly, metamorphosis is recognized as a fact, so . . .”
“So what? It was recognized as fact, since the time of Aristotle, that the earth was at the center of the universe. But now we are told that the earth in fact moves round the sun. It seems to me that the only truth we have is that we live in a chaos of superstition and experiment. How can we know where we are while natural philosophy is still vying with the old world of magic and traditional lore?
“Few now believe in unicorns as they once did, but if horned beasts are to be relegated to legend, where does that leave the poor old rhinoceros? We cannot believe Aristotle now, so does that mean we should also question the authority of the Bible? If the earth is not the center of the universe, then where does that leave God and His creation of it? If there is a chance that a piece of rotten fruit, or a cabbage leaf, or a pile of dung can create life, where does that leave God as the ultimate creator? Where does that leave the promise of eternal life?” I ran out of breath and smiled to see James both stunned and speechless.
“Well,” he said at last, “you appear to have rediscovered your curiosity. Along with your voice.”
I laughed. “So I do.”
“What a truly remarkable person you are, and what a pity it is that you can’t join our club. You’ve a quicker and more interesting mind than many virtuosi.”
“Why can’t I join your club? Why can’t I go to the coffeehouse with you?” I waved my hand. “Oh. Don’t even bother to tell me. I already know the answer. It’s only open to gentlemen.”
“I’d welcome you right away,” James said as we walked on. “But I’m afraid we’d be a club of only two.”
“Nobody else would stay if I was there?”
“They’d be afraid a woman would hinder and corrupt their flow of ideas, cast a malign influence over their experiments.”
I rolled my eyes in exasperation. “You do know that is ridiculous?”
He grinned. “I certainly have no evidence of it.”
“The Duchess of Newcastle was permitted to attend the Royal Society meeting,” I ventured.
“Just once. And she, poor lady, is considered a freak of nature, an embarrassment to her sex and her family, for her interest in science.” He tucked my hand back under his arm. “There’s something I want to show you. The conditions are perfect, so I’m sure they’ll be there.”
“What will be there?”
“Wait and see. It is a surprise.”
We came to a copse of magnificent oaks with a small clearing in the middle.
“There,” James said, and looked up.
I followed his gaze into the shelter of green leaves and filtered rays of gold light.
Flickers of violet. A dozen indigo wings. Purple-black butterflies, like the drawings from the pages of the book James had made for me after first I met him.
I ran ahead a few steps, into the glade. The butterflies flitted just a little higher, riding the currents of the air. I stood with face upturned to the arching branches and the sky beyond. Something about their twirling flight made it impossible to stand still. I turned round slowly, watching them. I held out my arms like a swaying tree, dancing in the breeze, my silk skirt swishing. The butterflies flitted higher and higher toward the tops of the trees and I was suddenly giddy.
James caught me as I almost lost my balance. As he set me back on my feet and looked into my smiling face, the light seemed to dim in his own eyes, as if he had transferred all his strength and happiness to me and had nothing left for himself. “James, you look so sad.”
“Not at all. And neither are you anymore, I think.”
I shook my head. “I don’t know how you do it.”
“Do what?”
“Make me feel again how I felt as a little girl. That everything is there to be discovered. Everything is possible. That life can be good.”
“It is the study of butterflies that makes you feel that way, and having a passion, and never, ever letting go of it.”
“Thank you,” I said. “For not allowing me to let go. For bringing me here.”
He appeared about to say something more, then changed his mind. “Those purple butterflies are so shy, you’ve no chance of netting one unless you come prepared.”
“Which, of course, you have.”
He produced from his pocket not a flower but a small lump of meat wrapped in paper. He set it at some distance from us on the grass.
We watched. We waited. Soon enough a flicker of purple descended from above, came drifting down and settled on the carrion, to be followed by another. They fluttered their wings once or twice, then folded them up, revealing an underside of shimmering purple, like shot silk.
James didn’t pounce, as I was about to do. He seemed content to watch, to stand back respectfully and admire from a distance, to let them just be.
“Now, what name would you give to them?” he whispered.
I was entranced, as in the presence of a king all cloaked in royal purple. One was smaller than the other, and one brighter. Was one a female and one a male, one a princess and one an emperor, and if so which way around was it? Purple Emperor. Purple Princess. I’d never considered there could be butterflies that fed on meat, like human beings. They seemed to be relishing the little feast we’d brought for them.
“Do they have teeth?” I asked quietly.
“Ah, now, you’d only find that out by observing up close. Would you like to have one of them, for your collection?”
“You have one already?”
“A perfect pair.”
“Did you catch them here?”
“Last spring.”
“So they’re likely to be of the exact same species?”
We could study James’s specimens, learn from them; we didn’t have to take anymore. But that didn’t stop me craving one of these exquisite beauties for myself. And James knew it. He knew me too well. Without a word from me, he was already creeping toward the spot where the butterflies had alighted. He moved very slowly, as if in a dream; then at the last moment was quick as a cat with a mouse. He clapped his net around the two of them, pinched one, then the other, between his fingers, impaled them on a pin upon the brim of his hat and placed his hat back on his head, while I was still marveling at the deftness of his fingers.
Standing in the middle of the sunny clearing, wearing a pincushion on a ribbon like a medallion, his hat adorned with purple butterflies, he looked like a very young and clever magician. He conjured two boiled eggs from his pocket and handed me one. We peeled the eggs and ate them; then he handed me his flask of whiskey. “Not a very grand picnic, I am afraid.”
I took a nip and wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. “It is the very best kind.”
As we walked back through the oaks toward the moat, I glanced at my butterflies on his hat.
“They’ll be perfectly safe,” he assured me. “I told you, a hat’s the finest receptacle there is.”
“I can see it. I’m just thinking what a shame it is that I don’t have that kind of a hat.”
He stopped, took it off and placed it firmly on my head. It slid down over my eyes, so he adjusted it, tilted it slightly at a jaunty angle. “Very becoming.”
“I’ve often thought I’d be best suited as a boy.”
“Well, I’m sincerely glad you’re not one.” He gave a little cough, as if to cover what he’d just said. “If you were a boy, I’d have no female acquaintances at all,” he finished.
The Lady of the Butterflies Page 31