The Lady of the Butterflies

by Fiona Mountain

  “Near London.” She might as well have said Mexico, for the great distance it seemed to me then. “What makes you think they have gone there?”

  “Mistress Gideon asked me to post a letter for her. Then lo and behold a letter comes back and the next day they set off. My bet is she was writing to a relative of hers to ask if they could pay a visit. I think I can just about remember the address.”

  I would always be a few miles, a few hours behind them. They had not covered their trail very well but they did not need to. So long as they kept on moving from place to place, I would never catch them. But I would die before I ceased trying.

  I PARTED with my last necklace in Lincoln and bought a brown wool dress from a secondhand clothes seller. It was too big for me and it undoubtedly had lice living in the seams, but I had lice aplenty already and at least it was thick and warm and not in rags and tatters like my own gown.

  I stayed at the same inn in King’s Lynn that I had stayed at before, but the landlord did not recognize me. Instead of giving me the best room that was reserved for quality folk, I was allotted a pallet under the eaves.

  It took me two weeks to reach Newington Green, to find the small cottage owned by a shady character whose name was Street. He denied all knowledge of Sarah Gideon or of Richard Glanville until I gave him every last penny I had, and he told me that they had gone to Mitcham.

  “Mitcham?”

  “It is the Montpellier of England, don’t you know, surrounded by fields of lavender and chamomile and peppermint for the London perfumers.”

  “But why have Sarah Gideon and Richard Glanville gone there?”

  “There are many fine, fine houses. John Donne lived there, and Sir Walter Raleigh.”

  “Please, sir. I have no more money to give you.”

  “Sarah had an appointment with a French tailor, to be measured for her wedding gown.” He closed the door in my face.

  I FILCHED A PIE from a market stall and spent the night beneath a tree, shivering myself to sleep, with my fingers wrapped ever more tightly around the dagger. I was in fear for my life now. I was searching for Richard and yet I was in terror of him finding me first, of him finding me and taking his sword to my throat. Of Sarah Gideon doing the job for him.

  She was no longer content to be his mistress. She wanted to be his wife and Richard was evidently prepared to overlook entirely the fact that he already had a wife. It was no longer enough just to prove I was mad and to lock me away. They were not prepared to wait until eventually nobody even remembered I existed. Sarah had gone to Mitcham to have her wedding gown made. They wanted me out of the way immediately, altogether, forever.

  James had written to me of Mitcham, so long ago it seemed like a dream, a dream of swaths of violet flowers that exuded the most soothing fragrance and attracted clouds of white butterflies. There was no lavender now. The fields were brown instead of purple. There were no white butterflies. It seemed there was no beauty left in the world, no hope.

  I rode over the common to the manor of Mitcham Cannons. If Mitcham was anything like Tickenham, whoever resided there would be aware of any visitors to the village. The benevolent gentleman who opened the door took me for a beggar woman and invited me in for bread and cheese and to warm myself by the fire. He never even had the chance to tell me his name. My own name caused too much of a stir.

  “I am Eleanor Glanville of Tickenham Court in Somersetshire,” I said, my voice croaking with disuse. “I am looking for my son. He is traveling with my husband, Richard Glanville, and a woman. I was told they were in Mitcham.”

  The man stared at me aghast and I thought I knew why. I was still clutching the dagger beneath my tattered riding cloak, beneath which I was wearing an old dress that hung off my shoulders and trailed past my feet. My boots had holes in them and my hair hung in snarls around my dirty face. I had been traveling so long that I had quite forgotten how to be still and I paced back and forth, as I chewed on bread that I held in fingers cracked and bleeding from the cold. I must look like a madwoman for sure. I felt like one.

  “He told you I was mad, sir?”

  He shook his head very slowly. “No, madam. He did not tell me you were mad. He told me that you were dead.”

  My feet stopped pacing. “Dead?”

  “It was my understanding that Richard Glanville’s wife died of ague some months ago.”

  How cruel. It was the cruelest mockery, to claim I had died of the disease that had killed the rest of my family, the disease that I had feared all of my life.

  “Dead?” I repeated, walking again. I took five paces forward, came up against the wall and turned, took five paces back. “Dead of ague?”

  “They obviously feared it might be called into question. While she was having her wedding gown fitted, Mr. Glanville had an appointment with a solicitor, to have an affidavit drawn up to present to the clergyman who was to conduct their wedding, to prove that he was free to marry, to prove that his first wife was no longer living and that he was a widower.”

  Five steps forward, turn, five steps back. “Who signed it? Who signed the affidavit?”

  “They planned for the boy to sign, Mr. Glanville’s son.”

  “Did he do it?”

  “Apparently he came down with some affliction and was unable.”

  “He is my son too,” I said. “And he is a good boy. He will not commit perjury to enable his father to commit bigamy. He would not swear before God that I am dead, when he knows it for a lie.”

  “Then you should take great care, madam,” the gentleman said. “Maybe your boy will leave them no option but to turn the lie into truth.”

  “Where are they now?”

  “They were on their way to Somersetshire.”

  THE LIVERIED FOOTMAN who opened the door of William Merrick’s grand square-fronted residence on King Street in Bristol took one look at me and would have shut the door on me immediately, had I not anticipated his reaction and stuck my foot in the way.

  “Please tell him Eleanor Glanville is here to see him,” I said, and obviously managed to convey enough dignity in my voice to make him reconsider.

  I was eventually taken through to the silk-papered drawing room and I sat and waited on an overstuffed silk chair. The normality and luxury of it was such a contrast to my recent surroundings that it was almost offensive.

  Mr. Merrick strode in, checked when he saw me, bowed and raised my hand to his lips but did not kiss it, as if he feared to contract a disease. “Eleanor. It has been some time. I heard from Forest that you were . . . traveling.”

  I had no time to waste on pleasantries. “You know why?”

  He took the time to sit down properly, waited for me to do the same. “I know that after you ran out on your husband, he looked to find consolation in drink and found it also in the arms of another woman, and that other woman happens to be a conniving little minx named Sarah Gideon, widow of an attorney, who no doubt is using your husband’s drunkenness and misery to her own ends.”

  “He met her at the Llandoger Trow, didn’t he? I saw her with him, a long time ago.”

  “She and her now dead husband both frequented that particular tavern, yes. I do believe she always had a fondness for your husband, as most women seem to.”

  “She and Richard, with the help of Thomas Knight, have collected affidavits against me, to prove I am mad, so that they could take control of my estate, but now it seems that is no longer enough and they are bent on passing me off as dead, or else seeing to it that I really am, for all I know.”

  William shook his head from side to side in weary dismay. “Your father believed I would advise you wisely and I trust that I have always done so when you have allowed me. But I am afraid that I am at a loss as to how to advise you in your current predicament. This is outside any moral code that I can understand. I am an enterprising businessman. Richard Glanville, it would appear, is naught but an oversexed adventurer, as ruthless and corrupt as a buccaneer. And now he is unstable and a dr
unkard with it, and under the influence of a manipulative harlot.”

  “I did not come here for your advice, William,” I said. “I wish to write a new will, to supersede the existing one that was drawn up for me by George Digby’s attorney, along with the marriage settlement.” I did not explain that the Earl of Bristol was so similar to Richard in his affiliations and background that I had not wanted to go back to him or to his attorney. “I wish to have you witness it, William, and ensure it is given into the hands of your solicitor.”

  He looked vaguely uncomfortable.

  “You can do that for me?”

  He gave a brief nod, showed me to a rosewood writing desk by the window, handed me a sheet of vellum and a quill.

  My hands were shaking as I sat, dipped the pen in the ink and began to write. The scratching of the nib on the paper was the only sound in the room. I wrote three lines and then I signed my name. “There. It is done.”

  “So quickly?”

  I vacated the chair, dipped the nib again, handed Mr. Merrick the pen for him to sign as witness.

  He did not take it, but bent his head over the paper as he read what I had written. He stiffened, straightened slightly and looked at me askance, as if he doubted I knew what I was doing. He was clearly reluctant to put his name to the document.

  “It is my right, is it not, under the terms of a marriage settlement, to have my estate and possessions disposed of exactly as I see fit?”

  “Indeed so, but . . .”

  “It is my wish to leave everything to my uncle, Henry Goodricke, fourth baronet of Ribston, my late great-aunt Elizabeth’s son. He was taught to love Tickenham by my mother. So it is fitting that I entrust her estate into his care. Everything but a few pounds, which I bequeath to each of my children and to Mary and John Burges.”

  “You would disinherit your own son?”

  “I have no choice,” I said. “Forest is in collusion with his stepfather, and as it stands he has everything to gain by my death. But it is not only that I must do this in order to safeguard my life, it is that I want to safeguard the future of Tickenham Court, as I swore to do. And if I leave it to Forest, I am as good as leaving it to Richard, to his mistress, and if I am to face my father in Heaven, I cannot have that on my conscience.” I pushed the pen at William. “Please. Sign it.”

  He vacillated. He took the pen gingerly, but still he did not put it to the paper. He had the look of a person upon whom it had suddenly dawned that he was in the company of someone not wholly sane.

  I gripped the back of the chair. “You do not think I am capable of making a will? You do not think I am of sound mind?”

  His laugh was almost nervous. “Now that you mention it, I confess I am in some agreement with your commoners. As you know, I have long thought that nobody wholly in possession of their wits would go in pursuit of butterflies.”

  My hand went for the dagger I still kept in my pocket, and I pulled it out. With my other hand I grabbed William Merrick’s wrist. “Sign. God, damn it.”

  He looked so terrified that I laughed, which only frightened him more, as if he feared I was hysterical, a cackling loon. But whatever he thought of me, he did not dare refuse me. I stood over him as he wrote his name and then I made him fetch the footman to be second witness, and since the boy did not know how to write, he signed with a thick, dark cross.

  “What is your name?” I asked the boy.

  “Richard,” he said.

  It almost winded me. “Well, Richard,” I said gently, folding the new paper and handing it to him. “You take this for me, now, to your master’s solicitor.”

  He nodded, and with a glance at my former guardian, who, funnily enough, did not contradict my instruction, he turned and ran out of the room.

  THE SUN DISAPPEARED behind dense clouds and a fine rain spat in my face. Then the rain eased and mist rolled in, low and thick as a gray sea. When I breathed, it looked as if mist came out of my mouth, as if it had finally penetrated me, body and soul.

  I waited to feel Kestrel’s hooves sink beneath me into the mud. My mind reeled back, so that I could have sworn I was on the east coast again, and that soon I would see the great tidal mudflats and hear the lonely cries of wading birds. But the mist cleared and it was the flooded moors of Tickenham which spread out all around me, shimmering in a winter sunset. There must have been prolonged and torrential rain while I had been away, for the water had come up high, high enough to inundate most of Cut Bush Field, deep enough to drown the causeway completely, and was gushing and lapping now at the road as if to wash me away.

  I saw a man, standing alone further down the road, at the point where the track veered off to the left up to Tickenham Court and the rectory. My heart gave a jolt. It was not Richard. Nor was it Dickon. But it was someone I knew instantly, even from a distance, from his profile, from the angle of his shoulders and the way he stood, keen and watchful, perfectly at peace amidst the swans and the geese.

  James.

  I was sure it was not really him, that he was not really here, that I was as stark raving mad as they said I was, but he turned toward the road, as if he had been watching out for me, waiting for me. He started to walk toward me, and suddenly I knew that I wasn’t imagining it at all, and it did not matter that I was dirty and worn-out with tiredness, that my hands shook and that the servants he had met had inevitably warned him that I was completely insane. All that mattered was that he was here.

  I rode toward him, tumbled from my horse and splashed on unsteady legs across the flooded road, into his arms. If he was shocked at my appearance, he did not show it at all. All that showed in his eyes was the deepest sympathy and concern.

  “I am too late,” I said. “Dickon is not here, is he? I cannot find him, James.” My breath was a sob, and if he had not been holding me up I would have fallen in the mud at his feet. “I have searched all over the country and I cannot find him.”

  He smoothed my windswept hair away from my pale, dirt-streaked cheeks. “He is here,” he said quietly. “He is quite safe. But you cannot go to him.”

  “I must.” I tried to break away from his embrace but he held me fast. “James, I must see him.”

  “It was Thomas Knight who sent for me,” James explained steadily. “It seems he had an attack of conscience, on account of the fact that he owes his life to you. He wrote to me, to warn me, to warn you, not to go back to the house, not to stay here. Thomas is convinced that they mean to have you declared insane so that it will appear as if you have taken your own life. He says they will shut you away where you can never be found. He says Sarah Gideon is determined to be Sarah Glanville before the month is out.”

  “Is she here? Is she in my house? With my sons, my husband?”

  He took a breath, reluctant to confirm it. “She is.”

  I tethered Kestrel safely to a tree, turned from him and waded ankle deep through the floodwater, scaring a pair of mallards into hasty, clattering flight, as I retrieved the rowing boat James had brought with him. When he saw there was no arguing with me or stopping me, he climbed aboard too. We each took up an oar.

  The flooded expanse of the moor offered no place at all to hide, no opportunity to reach the house with any degree of secrecy. She’d have been able to see us approaching from far away, and she was there, waiting for us in the great hall, alone.

  She looked almost no different from how she had before, only even more showy and extravagantly dressed, in vermillion silk and dripping garnets as red as her painted lips.

  She took in my dirty face and hands, my ragged hair and clothes in tatters, and she looked well pleased, offered me the most self-satisfied smirk and then said condescendingly, and with astonishing gall, “I bid you welcome to Tickenham Court.”

  I stared at her smug, overpainted face, and it was as if all the distress I’d kept bottled up over the ordeals of the past days was suddenly channeled, had to find a way out. Unthinking, I did to her what Richard had done to me. I slapped her. Hard. Across her fa
ce. “That was for Dickon,” I said in a voice so calm and yet so wrathful that it did not sound like my own.

  It had not wiped the smile off her face, though, only widened it, sharpened it, and I realized that my appearance and my actions only served to confirm the accusations of insanity. I was proving them all right, playing into her hands. I was my own worst enemy. But I did not care anymore. I did not care. In fact it was almost liberating to be considered mad. I could do whatever I liked. “Where is he? Where is Dickon?”

  She removed her hand from her cheek, which I was pleased to see was now much redder than the other one, despite the ridiculous amount of rouge she was wearing. I was quite prepared to pull out the dagger that had so alarmed William Merrick if I did not get a satisfactory answer from her. “D’you hear me, you bitch. I want my son.”

  “Well, you cannot have him, I am afraid,” she said, a touch flustered now. “He is out.”

  I did not believe her. “Out?”

  “He’s gone to one of the tenants’ cottages. A child is running a fever. He insisted on taking some medicine, on staying with the boy until the fever has broken.”

  That was so like Dickon that I did not doubt now that she was telling the truth, but I was suspicious, and also disheartened.

  “You let him go?” I asked. “You broke him then, in the end? He has done . . . what you wanted him to do?”

  I saw, instantly, that it was not so. “His brother has gone with him,” she said. “To mind him, bring him back.”

  Tears sprang into my eyes. Well done, Dickon. And you said you were not brave.

  “Where is my husband?”

  “He is sleeping.”

  For some inexplicable reason, that threw me. There was an intimacy in those three words, a familiarity. He is sleeping. They put an image in my head, an image I did not want. I knew, so well, how Richard looked when he was asleep. So many times I had watched over his sleep after he suffered a nightmare. In the early days of our marriage, it was the greatest pleasure to me to just lie beside him and watch him. I knew the way his hair curled on the pillow, and his eyelashes fluttered when he was dreaming. I knew how his lips slightly parted. I knew that he preferred to sleep on his stomach, with his arm thrown up over his head, or on his right side, and that sometimes he would curl up his legs and his arms like a little boy. I knew the sound his breath made.