Lady of the Butterflies (40 page)

“It is safe to come in now,” I called.

He grinned when he saw me. “A lad with ringlets. Well, I never.”

“Oops! I forgot.” I scooped up my hair and knotted it at the back of my head, squashed the cap on top. “I was bound to get something wrong, since I’ve never been a lad before.”

James came up to me and lifted my chin, smoothed a strand of hair away and arranged the collar of my shirt. “Hmm. You’ll just about pass as my butterfly boy. A fitting name, since you’re such an uncommonly pretty little fellow. We just have to hope they’re all too busy with botany to pay too much attention to a dainty little lad with fair skin and golden lovelocks and the widest blue eyes. But then they may guess our ruse. Cross-dressing is all the rage at court, I understand.”

“Would it really be so bad for you if we were found out?”

“As bad as can be,” he said lightly. “They’d never forgive me for deceiving them. I’d likely be barred.”

I pulled the cap lower, fiddled with my cuffs. “I can’t let you take such a risk for me. I won’t go.”

“You can and you shall.” He handed me a box of butterflies. “And since you are my assistant, you’d better make yourself useful and carry one of these.”

“I’ll take them both.”

James picked up the other one. “You may be got up like a boy, but I’ll not forget you’re a little lady underneath. I’ll not burden you with too heavy a load when we’ve such a long way to go.”

IT DID NOT SEEM a long way at all. It took us well over an hour, but it was so easy and such a novelty to walk without the encumbrance of a long skirt that I practically skipped along in James’s boots to the coffeehouse, wishing I could wear breeches and boots all the time. How lucky men were to be so unhindered. We talked as we walked. He told me how such establishments as we were about to enter were multiplying in London, how they had even attained some degree of political importance from the volume of talk which they caused. Each camp, sect or group of fashion had built a meeting place around the little bean, and he made them sound such lively, stimulating places that I couldn’t wait to get there.

But I owed it to James to be as well prepared as it was possible to be.

“Tell me what it’ll be like,” I said eagerly as we made our way past the mansions and beneath the swinging wooden signs of rose garlands and cross keys. “Tell me what to expect. How should I behave? What should I do?”

He glanced at me as I gamboled along in his breeches beside him. “No point telling you just to be yourself, now, is there? But it really doesn’t matter how or who you are. A coffeehouse is a place for levelers, a medley of society where each man ranks and files himself as he pleases. A silly fop can converse with a worshipful justice and a reverend nonconformist with a canting mountebank. A person shows himself to be witty or eloquent and, before he knows it, he has the whole assembly abandoning their tables and flocking to his.” He patted the top of my head. “Since you’re both as witty and eloquent as any man, you could cause a sensation.”

“I most certainly could if they guess from the lightness of my voice that I’m not a man at all. No,” I decided. “I shall hold my tongue and not say a word. It’ll be much safer. I shall be quite content just to watch and listen.”

“I do not believe you’d be capable of that.”

I grinned. “What do they talk about?”

“Oh, there’s all manner of tattle and carping.”

We passed onto the great thoroughfare of Fleet Street, past the waxwork exhibition and the church of St. Dunstan’s-in-the-West, where the Great Fire had stopped short. I held on to my cap as a sudden gust of wind funneled down the street and threatened to expose my curls. We passed lawyers and countless taverns and then moved on to the goldsmiths and Temple Bar.

I almost lost my nerve when it came to going inside until James slipped his arm around my shoulders, as he might have done with any apprehensive young lad in his employ. I took a deep breath to calm myself and did just as he had told me, paid my penny and made my way with him, past the benches and tables, to the far corner of the clubroom.

The air was hot and thick with a fug of pipe smoke and the strong, bitter smell of coffee. Before I knew it I was sitting on a bench, pressed up against James with a steaming dish in my hand. A tall, richly dressed gentleman with a long, straight nose and glossy wig was holding forth with great verve to an attentive group on his belief, which stood opposed to most popular and much expert opinion, that fossils were actual remains of prehistoric life. He spoke in a mild Irish accent and had a very confident set to his shoulders for one so young. Most of those listening must have been twice as old as he was, but that didn’t seem to perturb him in the slightest.

I leaned in toward James’s ear, shielded my mouth with my hand. “Who ever is that?”

“Hans Sloane,” he told me. “Not yet twenty, training to be a physician. He’s the most ambitious young man you’re ever likely to meet. Has his sights set on becoming president of the Royal Society, no less. The older man to his right is the excellent John Ray. It’s to him that both Hans and I owe our love of natural history. He is too thin and eats far too little, but has the energy and enthusiasm of a man a third his age. You’d like him. He’s compiling an important global history of flora, from the specimens and descriptions Hans and I have collected for him.”

Between puffs on his clay pipe, John Ray was warning Hans Sloane not to leap to conclusions about fossils. “To be incautious is to plunge into mere speculation and enter the borderland between science and superstition,” he said patiently. Mr. Ray had a strong face, grave and inquiring, but with a touch of humor about his mouth. “We must be ruthless in our demand for accuracy of observation and in the testing of every new discovery. New knowledge is in its infancy and we must reserve judgment until the proof is compelling.”

James glanced at me and smiled. “A man after your own heart, in more ways than you know. He’s a minister by profession, barred from the pulpit for dissent. He cannot preach, but believes he pursues his calling by studying the works of the Lord.”

For a moment I saw my father sitting in John Ray’s place.

“A brilliant young naturalist friend of mine was questioning me about metamorphosis the other day,” James suddenly said to his friend John Ray. “I found I could not convince her that it is irrefutable.”

“Her?” Hans Sloane gave his friend a delighted, interested smile. I dipped my face to hide my hot cheeks.

“We have not yet sufficiently studied the subject and cannot venture on any rash pronouncement,” John Ray replied in more measured tones. “I do not wish to disappoint your intriguing friend, whoever she is, but you must tell her that the time for a full answer is not yet arrived. It might take generations of patient investigations before we reach a satisfactory conclusion. But for what it is worth, I myself do believe in butterfly metamorphosis. We see it happen in a different way with frogs, after all.”

“What is the use of butterflies, anyway?” a man called Nehemiah Grew asked.

“To delight our eyes and brighten the countryside like so many jewels,” John Ray replied. “To contemplate their exquisite beauty and variety is to experience the truest pleasure and to witness the art of God.”

I found I was smiling at Mr. Ray and he at me. I wished for all the world that I could shake off my disguise and talk openly to this wise old man.

“Tell me, young James,” John Ray inquired. “What has been occupying you lately?”

“I have been observing the characteristic marks that distinguish day-fliers from night-fliers,” James contributed, with his typical ease and unassuming friendliness. “I believe you are right, John. It seems to be clubbed antennae and whether or not wings are held erect or open when at rest.”

“And whether they are seen by moon or sun, of course,” Hans Sloane concluded.

“Ah, but some night-fliers are seen by day,” James added, to much general interest. It was clear he was liked as much as he was respected amongst them all, be they young or old, sophisticate or novice. It made me feel very privileged to be with him, to call him my friend.

The talk abruptly shifted to apple pips, a handful of which Hans Sloane had produced from his pocket. Then Mr. Ray talked about how his friend Willoughby had kept a tame flea on their travels in Venice. I did not catch all of what he was saying as I was distracted by other conversations going on around me. The general level of noise in the coffeehouse was extraordinary, but it didn’t take me long to tune my ear to the conversations of various sects, hotly debating contents of recent pamphlets and the news in the gazettes.

James wagged his elbow at me. “Drink up before it’s cold,” he whispered aside to me, indicating my full dish. “It’s good for you, cleanses the brain and fortifies the body.”

“I can believe it. These people are most certainly fortified with something.”

He laughed.

“Well now, Petiver,” Hans Sloane boomed. “Share your hilarity with the rest of us. And aren’t you going to introduce us to that little fellow beside you?”

If I could have slid into obscurity beneath the table, I would have done it. James cleared his throat. “My assistant, Isaac. He helps me with my butterflies.”

“Does he indeed? And were you talking about butterflies just now?”

“He’s not been in a coffeehouse before. He was giving me his impressions.”

Mr. Sloane turned his full attention on me, as if I was the most interesting person he’d ever met. “Well, lad, what do you make of it all?”

I felt my cheeks flame, but was thankful at least that hardly anyone else seemed to be listening.

“Come, come now, let the boy speak,” Mr. Sloane said in a raised voice. “It is, after all, the custom of the house to let every man begin his story and propose to answer another, as he thinks fit. ‘Speak that I may see you,’ does not the philosopher say? So let us see who we have here.”

My throat dried, as I felt all eyes turn to me. But then I felt James’s hand beneath the table slide across my knee, find my own hand and give it an encouraging squeeze.

“I believed I was coming to a coffeehouse but it seems I’ve stepped into a high court of justice,” I said. “It seems that here anyone in a camlet cloak can take it upon himself to reorder the affairs of church and state.”

Mr. Sloane hooted merrily and John Ray’s eyes twinkled at me kindly. “Your little assistant is both very erudite and observant,” he said. “I’m sure he’s a great asset and help to you in the observation of butterflies.”

“He is.” James still had a hold of my hand under the table, and he pressed it a little tighter. “I could not do without him.”

“YOU WERE VERY CONVINCING,” James said, after the session had ended with the customary prayers and we walked back out onto Fleet Street. It was dusk and still warm. “They were all taken in by you. Hans will probably try to poach you from me, he took you for such a bright little spark.”

“The sharpest wit would count for nothing if they knew what was, or rather was not, hidden inside my breeches.”

“Slow down,” James protested. “Why are you walking so fast?”

“Because I’m angry. And my legs are buzzing like a beehive. My head too, for that matter.”

James chuckled. “Coffee does that to you, if you’re not used to it. Don’t be despondent, Eleanor. You did it. You outfoxed them all.”

I swung round to him with my hands on my hips. “And what exactly was the good of that? What happens to me now?”

“You keep on with your work.”

“It will count for nothing. None will care to know what I do. Just because my name is Eleanor, not Edward or some such. Because I am a woman.”

“That’s not true,” James said emphatically. “You are an outstanding naturalist and you should be recognized as such.”

“Oh, James . . .”

“I mean it. Already because of you I’ve learned there are butterflies living only on the marshes that disappear when that marshland is destroyed. That’s a valuable lesson. It shows us the importance of butterflies in telling us about the world we live in. They are like little barometers, foretelling change. If a butterfly disappears, we should take note. It could be of vital importance one day.”