Lady of the Butterflies (2 page)

Part One

Winter

1662

THIRTY-THREE YEARS EARLIER

I
was woken in darkness by the joyful pealing of church bells. The church stood not a hundred yards from my chamber window, just across the Barton wall, so the room was filled with the merry and insistent clamor. My head was filled with it, and my heart. It was the loveliest sound. I stuck out my hand to part the heavy crewel drapes that were drawn around the great bed-frame to keep out the icy winter drafts, but it was bright silvery moonlight that shone through the chink in the curtains at the window. Why ever were the bells ringing with such jubilation in the middle of the night? Then I remembered. It was Christmas morning. The bells were calling everyone to the predawn Christmas service, everyone except my father and me. Christmas was to be celebrated across the whole of England again this year, in practically every household, except for a few of the staunchest Puritan ones, such as ours, where it was still forbidden, as it had been under Oliver Cromwell.

I dropped back against the pillows, fighting tears. I was nine years old, not a baby anymore. I was too old to cry just because I could not have what I wanted. I knew that in any case crying was a waste of time, would make no difference at all. With a little sigh I pulled the blankets up to my chin, wriggled down beneath them seeking nonexistent warmth, and stared up at the dark outline of the bed canopy. I should be counting my blessings rather than feeling sorry for myself. I was very privileged, after all. I lived in the manor house of Tickenham Court, with its medieval solar wing and dairy, its ancient cider orchards and teeming fishponds. My father owned all the land for miles around, over a thousand acres of furze and heath and fen meadow, or moors as they were called in Tickenham. I was far more fortunate than the village children, wasn’t I? The children who at this very moment were clutching excitedly at their mothers’ hands as they left their holly-bedecked cottages to make their way in their little boats over the flooded fields to church, with the prospect of a day of feasting on plum pottage and mince pies and music and games before them.

I laid my hand on my flat belly as it rumbled its own protest. In rejection of what my father saw as the evil gluttony of Christmas, I was to be made to fast all day. All day, and already I was hungry. If I were really lucky, there’d be a dish of eel stew tomorrow, bland and unspiced, according to Puritan preferences.

The bells chimed on, ringing out their tumult in the darkness, the high tinkling of the treble bell and the low boom of the tenor, and round again in a circle. It was as if they were summoning me, had an urgent message to impart. Oh, I did so want to go. We had a merry king on the throne of England now, a king who had thrown open the doors of the theaters again and restored the maypoles, much to my father’s disgust. But I did so want to know what it was to be merry, to dance and sing and laugh and wear bright, pretty gowns and ribbons. Even just to see the candlelit church would be something. What harm could it do just to look? If God had gifted me with my irrepressible curiosity, surely he would forgive me for giving in to it now. Wouldn’t he?

I pushed back the blankets, exhaling mist, bracing myself for the rush of icy air through my linen shift. But it was not the cold that made my fingers shake as I crouched by the stone fireplace to light a candle from the dying embers. I was afraid of going out in the dark on my own, wary too of the reception I would receive from the villagers. The serving girl had warned me that, since we shunned all their celebrations, my appearance at one might well be regarded with animosity, mistrust. But inquisitiveness eclipsed all else, as it always did for me. I was too impatient to put on my woolen dress, and I left my hair in its long, thick golden night-plait. In bare feet I crept down the narrow spiral stone stairs that led from the solar to the great hall. I put on my mud-stained shoes and my hooded riding cloak. It was made of the thick red West Country cloth that was so traditional in Somersetshire that even my father did not balk at its bright color.

My heart hammering fit to burst with a mixture of excitement and terror, I slipped out of the door and through the gate in the Barton wall that led into the misty moonlit churchyard, stole silent as a ghost through the silvery lichen-encrusted tombstones, past the graves of my little sister and my mother, both dead over a year now. I breathed deep of the cool air and listened to the honking and trilling of the swans and marsh birds feeding out on the floodplains, the beating of hundreds upon hundreds of wings. An owl hooted and the air was redolent with the familiar tang of marsh and peat and mist. Out on the vast, dark water there was a straggling line of bobbing lanterns from the rowing boats carrying the worshippers to the service. They seemed to me like small stars traveling through the night to join with the great illumination that emanated from the wide-open door of the church of St. Quiricus and St. Juliet, a holy golden light that blazed a welcome.

I peered tentatively round the great oak doorway, not quite daring to let my feet cross the threshold, and I gasped wide-eyed at the beauty and color of it. There must have been a hundred candles or more, all around the altar and the pulpit and lining the nave and pews. There were garlands of rosemary and holly and fresh-scented rushes strewn on the floor and wicker baskets of marchpane sweets and sugarplums set out for the children. The fiddlers and drummers were waiting to begin the music and the players were already assembled at the front of the church, the kings with beautiful velvet cloaks trimmed with real ermine, the shepherds accompanied by real sheep. Two cows had been brought in too, and a placid-looking donkey.

I felt a light tap on my shoulder and nearly jumped out of my skin. It was Thomas Knight, the dark-haired, dark-eyed son of a sedge-cutter. He was over a foot taller than I and three years older, twelve years to my nine, and for some reason I’d not been able to fathom, he hated me. I wanted Thomas to like me, as all children want people to like them, I think, and I had made a consistent effort to be friendly and polite to him, even when sometimes what I really wanted to do was stick out my tongue at him. But it seemed to make no difference what I did. Except that now, there was the definite curve of a smile softening his long, swarthy face. I returned it gladly, but warily. “Hello, Thomas,” I said.

“Merry Christmas, Miss Eleanor,” he said, with what I took, delightedly, to be complicity, acceptance.

“Merry Christmas to you too,” I replied. The forbidden greeting felt peculiar on my lips, beneficent as a charm, not like a sin at all.

“D’you think it so very evil then?” He nodded toward the gilded interior of the church.

“Oh, Thomas. I’ve never seen anything so lovely.”

“Here. I’ve got something for you.” People were walking toward the porch now and Thomas grabbed hold of my arm and pulled me round the side into the dark. I was not frightened, only surprised and very interested to see what it was that he had. He uncurled the palm of his big hand to reveal a little marchpane sweet, delicate as a rosebud, incongruous against his chapped and cold-reddened skin. My mouth watered, but even if it hadn’t looked so delicious and appealing, I’d have wanted to take it, just because Thomas had been so kind and generous as to think to offer it to me. I hated to think how I might hurt his feelings if I rejected his gift.

He thrust the sweet impatiently toward my face. “Well, go on, then,” he said gruffly. “What are you waiting for?”

Still I hesitated, then gave a small shake of my head. “I thank you, Thomas. But I had better not.”

His expression suddenly changed. His deep-set dark eyes narrowed and there was a glint of challenge, of a slow-burning resentment. “Not good enough for you, taking food from the hand of a sedge-cutter’s son, is that it?”

I was mortified. “Oh, Thomas, please don’t think that. Please don’t be offended. I am grateful, really I am.” With a child’s fear of being seen to be different, I was almost ashamed to admit the real reason, yet it was preferable to having him think me haughty. “It’s just that I’m not supposed to eat anything at all today.”

“Who’s going to know?” He said it in such a conniving, nasty way that all of a sudden I was no longer so concerned about upsetting him. I didn’t like the feeling that I was being forced to do something against my will. I didn’t want the sweet at all now anyway. “Leave me be, Thomas,” I said quietly.

Susan Hort, one of the tenants’ daughters, stepped out from behind a gravestone where she’d obviously been hiding and watching. “Told you,” she scoffed. “Told you you’d not get her to touch it. She’s stubborn as a little ox, that one.”

Thomas shoved the sweet right up under my nose. “Just one bite,” he said. “You know you want to.” He glowered at me threateningly so that I felt a twinge of panic, but I would not give him the satisfaction of seeing it. “Let me alone, Thomas,” I said with as much confidence as I could summon. “I said I don’t want it.”

I took a step back, but out of the corner of my eye I saw Susan Hort move behind me as if to trap me. Thomas thrust out his arm and forced the sweet against my mouth as though he were going to ram it through my closed lips. With a rush of rage and humiliation I batted his hand away so that the sweet went flying. Almost before I knew what was happening, Susan had grabbed my plaited hair and jerked me back, had me by the waist, trapping my arms at my sides. She was a sturdy country girl and easily tall enough to lift my feet off the ground. I twisted and squirmed, but she held me all the tighter, so I struck back with my boots at her shins.

“You vicious little rat!” She threw me to the ground, where I fell, sprawled on the soggy grass. I saw the marchpane lying by a clump of sedges right beside my hand. Thomas saw it too and snatched it, and before I could get up he had sat himself down on top of my chest, turning me over and pinning me flat on my back on the damp, chill earth, the crushing weight of him making it hard for me to breathe. He gripped my jaw tightly between his roughened forefinger and thumb and squeezed.

“Get up. Right now. Leave that child alone.” It was Mary Burges, the new rector’s wife, and at the sound of her firm command Thomas reluctantly released me and scrambled to his feet as Susan fell back.

Mary was not much past twenty, but she had had five younger brothers and sisters, so she knew very well how to manage scrapping. She was bustling and plump and maternal, with a soft, round face and eyes as sweet as honey. I was always glad to see her, though never so much as now.

She offered her hand to help me up. “Are you hurt, Eleanor?” she asked, concerned, bending to draw my cloak around me.

I shook my head, blushing. Bar a few scratches, it was only my pride that was wounded. I stood up straight and tried to be dignified, though there was mud on my shift and I could feel a wet smear of it on my cheek. Tendrils of my hair had sprung free and were falling down around my face. I smoothed them away, rubbed at my dirty cheek. I felt very foolish and embarrassed to be the cause of such a scuffle and over something as trifling as a sweetmeat.

“What do you think you were doing, the pair of you?” Mary said sternly to Thomas and Susan. “And on our Lord’s birthday, a time of goodwill and peace.”

Thomas turned his sullen eyes on her and did not answer.

I licked at my lips and tasted the faintest trace of almond sweetness. “It was nothing, Mistress Burges,” I said, wanting it over and done with now. “Just a silly game.”

Mary glanced at me appreciatively. “It seems little Eleanor here has enough goodwill for all three of you.” She fixed Thomas with a reproachful look, as if she knew him to be the main culprit. “It didn’t look like a game to me, but if you both apologize and run and take your seat in the pews, we’ll say no more of it.”

Thomas glowered menacingly at me while he and Susan mumbled an apology of sorts and slunk away. I watched them scurry together into the bright church, where the fiddlers and drummers were starting to play. Only now did I realize that I was trembling.

“We’d better get you back to the house,” Mary said kindly. “Before your father finds you’re missing. Look at you, child. You’re not even properly dressed.”

Someone came to close the church door and the emission of lovely, gilded light was abruptly shut off, leaving only the darkness and the cold moonlight. “Why does Thomas hate me?” I asked. “Is it just because we are Puritans?”

“That is no doubt part of it.” Mary put her hands on my small shoulders and looked down into my face. “But I expect it is not only that.”

“What then?”

She smiled. “Well, it does not help that you are such an unusual child. When people see you down on the moor climbing trees for birds’ eggs, pond dipping and hunting under rocks for beetles and whatnot, they do not understand why a little girl should take such an interest in such things—a little girl who will one day be their lady of the manor at that. Most people are very fond of you, for all your strange ways, on account of your sweet nature and kind heart. But that does not mean that gossip does not get passed around and exaggerated. One of the first things the kitchen boy told me when we first came here was that you have a collection of animal skulls and bones in a little casket in your chamber.”

“Oh, but I do,” I said honestly, my disappointment suddenly forgotten in a rush of enthusiasm. “It is amazing what you find in owl pellets. I think the bones must belong to water voles or mice, since they are the right size and owls hunt them. I have a dead grass snake and damselfly too, and all kinds of shells and feathers and fossils.”

“I am sure they would look very well in a curio cabinet,” Mary said. “But in a little girl’s bedchamber?”

“If I was a boy nobody would think it so strange, would they?”

She did not deny that. “The trouble is that people fear what they do not understand, and all too often that kind of fear makes them hostile.”

My eyes widened. “Thomas Knight and Susan are afraid of me?”

“A little, perhaps.”

It seemed extraordinary, unlikely, but not altogether unpleasing. I had never considered that I could be capable of frightening anyone. Then I remembered the flinty resentment in Thomas’s eyes and I shuddered. “No,” I said. “There is more to it than that, some other reason he does not like me. I’m sure of it.”