Lady of the Butterflies (51 page)

I took hold of both his hands, held them tight. His face was so careworn that it tore at my heart. “That is not going to happen,” I said. “Do you hear me?”

He looked at me in silence, as if he had not heard me at all. “Your word, Nell. Give it to me.”

I gave one small, imperceptible nod, doubting that I should ever be put to the test. With each day that passed, it seemed less likely that we would be faced with the problem of what to do with Tickenham’s rebels if they should come home.

Autumn

1685

I
t was nearly five weeks after the battle on Sedgemoor when I was woken in the middle of the night by Bess, standing at the side of the bed with a candle, oblivious to the hot wax that was about to spill all over her hand. “It’s Thomas,” she cried, with quiet urgency. “You have to help me.”

Richard stirred, rolled over onto his stomach. He put out his arm as if to try to find me and his eyelids fluttered, but he did not wake. With a guilty glance at his peaceful sleeping face, I slipped quickly from the warmth of our bed, letting the hangings ripple shut behind me. I grabbed Bess’s arm and pulled her with me out of the chamber, closing the door softly after us.

She was shaking, her face blotched from crying. “He is badly wounded.” She was struggling, in her distress, to keep her voice to a whisper. “He was shot in his side and I think his arm is broken. Ned is . . .” She broke down and sobbed.

I put my arms around her heaving shoulders. “Bess, are you sure?”

“Tom was with him,” she rasped. “He saw the bayonet go right through . . . Ned’s chest. He still has the blood all over his shirt.” She made an effort to calm herself. “Tom will die too, if we don’t help him.”

“Where is he?”

“Below stairs. The hall. My father said we should bring Tom here. He said you would know what to do, how to treat the wounds. I’ve told my father to wait outside. To keep a lookout.”

“Good,” I said, with a glance back at the chamber door, wishing a sentry could be posted there too, in case Richard should wake, to keep him from knowing how I was deceiving him.

Bess had propped her brother on the settle, but he was so weak and sick that he had slumped over, his eyes closed and his breathing fitful. His clothes were ragged and filthy. He had grown a thick beard and mustache, and the rest of his face was so ingrained with dirt as to render him almost unrecognizable.

Bess ran to him, crouched down on the floor beside him and stroked his mud-caked hair. She held the candle for me while I moved him as gently as I could to examine the injury.

“Someone has removed the missile and debris and tried to bandage him,” I said. “They must have been too afraid to let him stay.”

The cloths needed changing; they were bloody and stinking and had stuck to his skin. He barely winced as I eased them away, though the pain must have been great. The wound underneath showed no sign of healing, was suppurating, still gaping and ragged and oozing fresh blood and yellow pus. I turned away and covered my mouth, trying not to retch. The pale bone of his rib was almost visible through the mess. He was so thin that the rest of his ribs were scarcely better covered.

“It needs stitching,” I said. “Warm some water and fetch some lint and vinegar, my strongest silk thread and needle, and a large measure of Bristol milk . . . make that three. I’ll light the fire and mix up an ointment.”

“He needs a surgeon,” Bess said.

I shook my head. “We cannot risk it. Besides, I have more faith in my mother’s remedy book than ever I have had in surgeons.”

I tipped Thomas’s head back and made him drink the sherry, threw a hefty dose down my own throat, handed the glass to Bess. “Drink,” I ordered. “You’re going to need it.” I gave Thomas a cloth to bite on, so he would not make a noise when he cried out. With Bess still holding the candle, angling it to give the best possible light, I took a deep breath and tried to stop my hands from trembling as I drew together the jagged edges of the skin as well as I could. The feeling of needle going through flesh was horrible, and never before had I wished I was more skilled at needlework. But I sewed as neatly as I could, suturing the wound and leaving an orifice for it to drain before rebandaging.

I turned my attention to Thomas’s left arm next. It was hanging limp and was badly misshapen just above the elbow. With a glance at his half-conscious face, I put my hands either side of the fracture and did my best to jerk it straight. There was a ghastly sensation of crunching, but if there was any sound it was masked by Thomas’s scream. Bess clamped her hand over his mouth until his eyes ceased rolling in their sockets. I bound the arm to a splint of kindling wood.

“What do we do now?” Bess asked, her eyes darting toward me as we changed Thomas into one of Richard’s clean shirts that she had fetched from the laundry and she trickled water between her brother’s parched lips. “Where can he go? My cottage is the first place they will look and there is nowhere for him to hide in my father’s, either. Someone will see him. He will be found immediately.”

“I know what you are asking of me, Bess, and I cannot do it.”

“If you won’t do it for Thomas, then do it for me, for my father and mother.”

“I am a mother too,” I reminded her. “I am a mother of two children who need me. For their sake, I cannot risk a traitor’s death.” I did not mention Richard, who had expressly forbidden me to have any contact with the rebels, and who would surely see what I was doing now as traitorous to him and to our marriage.

“The constable will not come knocking at this door,” Bess said.

“I cannot guarantee that. And even if he does not, there’s plenty who’d betray us for a bounty of five shillings.”

“Your father would have been the first to join the Duke of Monmouth,” Bess pleaded desperately. “He’d have gone into battle with Thomas and Ned, you know it. He might have met his death on Sedgemoor, or he might have survived and needed somewhere to hide, someone to take a risk and save him from the gallows. He would not have turned Tom away, in the most dire need, when he had been fighting for the cause. Your father would have been prepared to sacrifice his own life for that cause.”

“He did sacrifice his own life for it,” I said a little harshly. “And so left me all alone. I would not sacrifice my life so readily when there are two children depending on me.”

“Then I’ll tell you why you should help Thomas.” We looked up and saw Arthur Knight standing by the doorway. “Mistress Glanville,” he said to me quietly, “if you turn Thomas out this night and do not help him, you are abandoning your own flesh and blood.”

“What do you mean?”

“Thomas is your half brother.”

“That is a low trick, Arthur.”

“I swear it is no trick.”

“I’ll not believe it. My father would be the last person to . . .”

“Tom is not your father’s son. He is your mother’s.”

“No.” I shook my head. “No.” But it was an instinctive response, and even as I gave it, I knew that what Arthur Knight had said must be true. The disparaging comments his wife had made about my mother, my father’s dying words about the base desires and carnality of women.

“It was when she was engaged to be married to your father,” Arthur Knight began clumsily. “She had always had a . . . a fondness for me. She preferred the company of ordinary folk, had a great love for the people of this estate. She had no time for fine, false gentlemen, she said, or for parties and balls. She liked to be out on the moor, chattering to me while I cut the sedges and taught her to recognize the plants and birds. We never spoke of love. We did not need to. But of course, it could not be. And then . . . Thomas. It was kept very quiet. She went away for a while, to your father’s relatives in Ribston, where he set out to redeem her. He would not let her keep the baby. But my wife loved me enough to love my son, even if he was the child of another woman. Pride made her refuse any payment, though your father did offer it.”

If I wanted to know why my father was so zealous, here was one answer. He’d feared that my mother’s sins proved her unworthy, that she was not one of the Puritan elect, was not destined for salvation but was condemned. And I too, since I was of the female line.

After a silence it was Bess who asked: “Does Tom know?”

“Yes,” I answered, on Arthur Knight’s behalf. “Thomas has always known. That’s why he has always despised me. That is why he told me once that I had stolen from him. Why he looks at me so covetously. He is my mother’s only son. If he was not base born, Tickenham Court would be all his.”

“We didn’t intend to tell him,” Arthur said hurriedly. “But he was ill with a fever. Your mother came to the cottage then, insisted on nursing him herself day and night. It seemed certain he would die and she asked if she might tell him the truth. I think he would have half guessed it anyway, from the way she was with him. Your mother loved Tom,” Arthur Knight insisted. “She saved his life with her care. She would want you to save it now, with yours.”

I could not take it in. Did not have time to take it in now. All those years I’d thought I had nobody, I had a brother, living not half a mile away. A brother who hated me, who had threatened me, led a riot to my door to torch my house. Because to his mind, but for an accident of birth, it should have been his. What was mine should all have belonged to him. But I did not have time to dwell on such thoughts. I had to act, to make a decision. “All right,” I said hastily. “He can stay. Just until he is stronger. Help me move him.”

His father sat beside him and hooked one of Thomas’s arms around my shoulders, stood and hauled him up between us.

“Where to?” he asked.

“This way. Quickly, before anyone wakes.”

I supported Thomas’s other arm, wedging my shoulder beneath his armpit. Bess took his feet and together we half lifted, half dragged him over to the great fireplace.

“Put him down here,” I said.

“Here?”

“Just do as I say.”

They did.

I lifted up the candle, ran my fingers over the wall at the side of the fireplace, dug my fingers into the crack in the wainscoting and heaved. The oak panel swung open like the small door it was, to reveal a niche cut deep into the side of the massive chimney breast, just large enough to hide one man, possibly two. “It is not very comfortable,” I said. “But it is warm and dry and, except for me and now the two of you, nobody who lives here even knows it exists.”

Bess peered inside doubtfully.

“It was constructed for just such a purpose,” I told her.

“It’s a priest hole,” Arthur Knight said with wonder. “Where they hid Catholics during the Reformation.”

“Ironic, really.” I smiled. “Given that Thomas is here because he tried to get rid of a Catholic king.”

“How did you know it was here?” Bess asked.

“My mother told Mary Burges and she told me to look for it, which I did, a long time ago.” I shone the candle into a low recess in the thick wall. As I crouched down and crawled in, my chest tightened with the primal fear of confinement.

We eased Thomas in and I made him as comfortable as I could, with a straw pallet and blankets and pillows to support his head.

“Do you think you could bear to stay with him, in case he wakes?” I said to Bess, knowing I was asking her to do something I was not at all sure I’d have been able to do myself. “If he cries out he will endanger us all.”

Bess nodded fearfully. She squeezed herself up against the wall, took her brother’s hand. Her half brother, I reminded myself. My half brother. It was so odd to think that Thomas was as much my kin as he was Bess’s. We were both his sisters, which made it feel almost as if she and I were related, were sisters too, as I had always felt that we were.

I brought a jug of ale, a plate of bread and cheese, and some custard tarts, as well as a chamber pot, a small stool and a spare candle. “That should see you through until I can come back again tomorrow night,” I said. “Is there anything else you want me to fetch?”

Bess shook her head, then grabbed my arm as I turned to crawl back out and leave them. “Thank you,” she said. “I know what a risk you are taking for us.”

“We are all taking the most terrible risk, Bess. By sheltering a man who, in the eyes of the law, is guilty of treason, we are committing treason too. If we should be caught we will burn, or hang, or be beheaded as enemies of the crown. You do realize that?”

“What else could we do?”

I fitted the paneling back in place and had rested my back against it, glanced up into the dark stairwell to where Richard must still have been sleeping, oblivious of what I had done. Arthur Knight touched my arm, as if he was too overcome with gratitude to speak. “It is nearly dawn,” I said to him. “Go home, before anyone sees you here.”

I walked weakly up the stairs. Only when I sat on the edge of the bed did I realize my legs were trembling uncontrollably. I felt sick, sick to my stomach and sick to my heart. I made myself take long, deep breaths, like I did when I was ill whilst carrying Forest. I realized then I had been feeling sick on and off for days, that my monthly was late. How late? I saw that my nightgown was stained with Thomas’s blood and with sudden horror tore it off, bundled it up and pushed it under the bed. I climbed naked under the sheets and nestled up close to Richard, resting my cold cheek against the smooth dark hairs on his warm chest. He stirred, gathered me into his arms and turned onto his side. I felt his cock probing my belly, stiff as a cudgel. He found my hand, guided it down and I wrapped my fingers around him.

He sucked his breath in with a hiss. “Hell’s teeth, where have you been, Nell? Your fingers are icy. It’s all right,” he added quickly, with a smile in his voice, grabbing me as I went to withdraw my hand. “I don’t mind if you warm them on me.”

He mounted me, looked down into my eyes with love and desire and I felt so deceitful, was so sure that he would read my deception, was so afraid of having him read it, that I averted my face.

He froze.

I turned back to him, saw his hurt. “Richard, I need to tell you something,” I said. But he tensed, as if he suspected what it might be, and the words lodged in my throat.

At my sudden silence, he pushed up on his arms, pinning me beneath him, his hipbones jutting painfully into my belly. “I am listening,” he said.

I felt totally trapped. How could I keep such a dangerous secret from him? How could I tell him the truth when I had already broken my word to him? I could not tell him Thomas was my half brother when I could scarce comprehend it myself.

“I feel sick,” I said feebly but truthfully. “Let me up.”