Free Lady of the Butterflies by Fiona Mountain Page A

answered, my father’s eyes snapped open. Somehow he guessed what we had been discussing and I swear his yellow skin turned white. “I’ll tell you now, I’ll not touch that newfangled potion peddled by Jesuit priests. I’ll not be Jesuited to death.”
    “Please, Father.” I tried not to sound desperate.
    “It has been used in Peru and Italy with remarkable results,” Dr. Sydenham persuaded.
    “Bah.” My father exploded in a coughing fit that turned his face puce. “The work of the Devil. How could you, Sydenham? You who matriculated at the very center of Oxford Puritanism?”
    “You’ll not die for Puritan intolerance, I trust, Goodricke?”
    My father had marched into war beneath a banner proclaiming, “Down with the Papists.” He’d risked fines and imprisonment and the plundering of his property rather than renounce his principles and his faith. He was a zealot.
    Of course he would die for Puritan intolerance. And there was nothing I or anyone else could do about it.
     
     
     
    MR. MERRICK HAD BEEN CLOSETED with my father, the chamber door firmly shut, since after dinner. Whatever it was they were discussing at such length, I only hoped it was not tiring Papa too much.
    I wandered out into the garden but there was no escaping the somber tolling of the church bell that announced the coming death and called everyone to the bedside to pay their last respects. I wanted to run from it, to put my hands over my ears to try to block it out, but it would have been a pathetically childish thing to do and I knew, already, that I was leaving childhood behind me forever. I went down onto the moor, watched the dragonflies and damselflies flashing azure wings, listened to the willow warblers, the booming of a fat little bittern in the reed beds, the joyous call of lapwings and the low, soft whistle of a wigeon. Life was going on all around, heartlessly, even whilst my father’s life was ending.
    When finally Mr. Merrick emerged he looked like a cat with a dish of cream. He said that my father was asking for me so that he could give me his special blessing. I walked into the darkened chamber feeling much older than twelve. During the fever I had done as Dr. Sydenham suggested and opened the drapes and the windows, but now that my father was close to death, he had wanted them all closed again. If I was dying, I thought, I’d demand to be taken outside, into the brightest sunshine.
    “You must not grieve too hard, child,” my father said quietly, seeing my stricken face. “You must not grudge Him for taking me when it is my time. I just pray that I can make a good death.”
    How could there be such a thing?
    I knelt on the plaiting of matted rushes by the bed and took his hand and felt him place his other hand upon my lace cap. “My little Eleanor, may your father in Heaven bless you and keep you. May He watch over you when I can do it no longer.”
    I was so determined not to disappoint him now, to appear brave and composed and accepting as he would want me to be, but the effort of holding back tears was making my head hurt terribly. Like a seawall holding back a great weight of water, the pressure was building up behind it. There was a pain in my throat as if I had tried to swallow a rock.
    I sat on a low stool, holding his large hand in both of mine. It was neither cold nor hot now, but somehow desiccated. “I wish I could make up for all the times I’ve ever displeased you, Papa,” I choked, lifting his hand to my lips and kissing it, holding it to my cheek. “I am sorry . . . so sorry.”
    “You are a good girl,” he said, then gave me a wan smile. “For the most part. Just try to live the rest of your life as you know I would want you to live it.” His once commanding voice was now so feeble that I had to lean in closer to hear him. “John Burges has given me his word that he will tutor you as best he can, but he will not have as much time to devote to it as I have done, nor the inclination to teach