An Unexpected Peril (Veronica Speedwell #6) -Deanna Raybourn Page 0,23
and the occasional mammalian corpse. His lordship’s coachman provided a steady supply of mice from the carriage house, which my greedy Malachites devoured with gusto. It was a curious thing to observe butterflies feeding eagerly on dead flesh—a sight that caused more than one lady visitor to recoil and reach for her smelling salts. I never begrudged them their curious diet. They offered too much joy in return to quibble over a few bloated mice here and there.
It was in the nature of butterflies to live transitory lives, fleeting as they were lovely, and it was with resignation that I watched as they lived out their brief existence, bursting into jeweled magnificence and then, after a few short months of activity, fading into oblivion. It was no easy feat to keep them alive throughout the deepening chill of a British autumn. The coal fires were kept stoked and the steam heat pushed through the pipes of the vivarium with the warmth of Hades, but still it was a struggle to drive the temperature above eighty degrees Fahrenheit, the necessary threshold for Malachites to fly. They drooped lower and lower upon their leaves, sulking amidst the bushes until, one by one, they perished, fluttering gracefully to the stone floor like drifts of paper born on an ill wind. I had collected them as they died, removing them gently to the Belvedere, where I mounted each upon a piece of card penned with the name of the species and its place of origin and date and place of death.
There was one last holdout against the intemperate frosts, the largest and most theatrical of the males, an enormous fellow who winged slowly about the females, dazzling them with his size rather than his speed. The smaller males darted furiously about, displaying their wings in lavishly acrobatic maneuvers, but my big, slow, steady favorite—whom I nicknamed Hercules—outdid them all, securing the favors of even the most timid of maiden butterflies. The vast majority of the dainty green eggs that had been laid amidst the shrubs were the product of his bridal flights, and in the end, he was the only one left, moving like a sad shadow through the limbs of the little jungle I had created, as if searching for the friends and wives he had lost.
I was not entirely surprised to find that his time had come at last. He lay on the floor of the vivarium in the shadow of a bush, his wings still trembling with the effort of flight. I lifted him onto my palm, bringing my hand up to my face so that I might see him clearly. He raised one forewing in what a fanciful person might have called a salute.
“Good-bye, my dear little friend,” I murmured. “Rest now.”
He flapped again a time or two but remained nestled in my palm. I sat in the fragrant steamy air of the vivarium, perspiration pearling my temples, and marveled at this exquisite creature with his viridian wings, so delicate they seemed hardly capable of holding his weight aloft. And yet they had, bearing him throughout his adventures until at long last his voyaging was finished. They were miracles of architecture, the lepidoptera, and I felt, along with a pang of loss, a fervent gratitude that I had discovered them as my life’s work. There was nothing so fragile as a butterfly wing, nor anything as lovely.
When at last he lay still, I rose to my feet and carried him out of the shocking warmth of the only home he had known, through the bone-snapping cold of the gardens and into the Belvedere. I worked for some time, pinning him gently whilst his wings were still pliable and unlikely to break. I wrote a description of this most extraordinary avatar of Siproeta stelenes. After a moment’s consideration, I took up my pen again.
Known to his friends as Hercules. It was a curious thing to write an epitaph for a butterfly, but it seemed wrong not to honor the dead when we have known them, no matter how small.
As wrong as leaving Alice Baker-Greene’s murderer unpunished, I thought in some agitation. Dropping the matter was not a choice I made with any great enthusiasm, and I knew it was one Stoker and I would revisit at another time. But I stood a better chance of persuading him if I could marshal a little proof, some tiny indication that a villain had been at work, snatching the life of an innocent woman