The Golden Butterfly

by Sharon Gosling

  “No,” Luciana said, “I’m wrong. It’s not water, or pebbles, or anything like that.”

  Charley blinked. “What is it then?”

  “It’s butterflies,” she said, almost laughing with the certainty of it all. “Don’t you remember how Grandfather always loved them? We’d spend hours looking at his books about butterflies. The spurs aren’t stones, they’re dots, and they are in patterns – they’re the patterns on the wings of butterflies. Look, that cluster there – that looks like a Painted Lady. There’s a Red Admiral, and that’s one of the Fritillaries – I’d have to check which – and that’s a little Speckled Wood. And that,” she said, pointing to the section she had moved. “What does that look like to you now that it’s in the right formation?”

  Charley frowned, squinting his eyes and turning his head sideways.

  “I’m not sure,” he said. “Except that part of it almost looks like … an eye?”

  “Yes, it does,” she said. “Except it’s not a real eye. It’s a false one. Like you’d find on the wing of a male Aglais io.”

  “A what?” Charley asked.

  “A peacock butterfly.” Luciana traced between the circles with a fingertip, drawing a shape among what she had once thought was mere chaos. The spurs she had turned had begun to connect, but two were still not aligned. Now that she knew what she was looking for though, Luciana knew exactly how to correct it. She turned two of the spurs in the opposite direction to the others, and as she did so the wavy lines moved into place. There, as clear as day to her now, was the delicate outline of a wing, patterned exactly like a peacock butterfly. Her finger landed on the final spur and Luciana felt it give under the pressure. She pressed it, hard. It clicked back into the wood. She repeated the journey around the newly formed wing shape, and as Luciana pushed in the final spur there was a loud click.

  Luciana slipped her fingers into the sliver of darkness that had appeared behind the butterfly’s wing and pulled. A narrow drawer slid out. It had been made to fit in the space at the rear of the desk, behind the cupboard that hid the locked drawers smashed open by Thursby’s men.

  Inside there was a small pouch made of worn black velvet. Luciana took it out, loosened the cord holding it closed and emptied the contents into her palm.

  “What on earth is that?” asked Charley.

  Luciana had no idea. She held a slim, triangular piece of metal about the size of her palm, shaped like a half-open fan. From one corner protruded a short strip of metal, thin as ribbon.

  Charley picked it up. “It’s really light, whatever it is,” he observed. He tapped the surface with a fingertip. “Definitely metal. Looks like gold, doesn’t it?”

  “It’s brass, I think,” Luciana said. “It’s just been very well polished.” Spying something, she leaned closer. There were three tiny indentations in the surface at each ‘corner’ of the fan shape. She took the object and held it up so that she could see the edge. Instead of being one flat piece of metal, it was actually formed of two very thin pieces held together. Sandwiched between the outer pieces were other pieces of metal.

  “I think it opens,” Luciana said.

  They took turns trying to find a way to make it reveal its insides, but to no avail. There seemed to be no catch, no button, no hidden pressure point and no hinges. At last Luciana laid it on the floor between them.

  “So … is this it?” Charley asked. “Is this the Golden Butterfly?”

  Luciana sighed. “I don’t know. It does almost look like a wing, doesn’t it? But the Golden Butterfly was about levitation. My grandfather made his assistant fly up from the stage and vanish. I can’t see how this lump of metal could help him do that, can you?”

  “Whatever it is, it must be important,” Charley said. “Marko hid it really well. I wish he were here to ask.”

  “So do I,” Luciana said, the elation of solving the desk’s puzzle dwindling.

  “What shall we do with it? Are you going to put it back in the secret drawer?”

  Luciana considered. “No,” she said. “I want to work out how it opens.” She thought for a moment. “What we need is a magnifying glass. That might reveal something we can’t see with our eyes alone – like how to open it.” She got to her feet. “Grandmother has one she uses for needlework in the evenings. I’ll go and get it – you take this back to the drawing room. It’s a bit warmer in there. Besides…” she stopped, hesitating.

  Charley raised an eyebrow. “You don’t want your grandmother to find us in here, with whatever it is?”

  “I just don’t want anyone to take it away from us,” she said. “Not yet. Not until we know what it is.”

  When she got back to the drawing room with the magnifying glass, they tried to persuade the strange object to open, but to no avail.

  “Maybe we need something to jimmy it,” Charley suggested. “Something thin enough to slide between the edges.”

  Luciana went to the table beside the fireplace and pulled open the drawer, looking for her grandfather’s old letter opener. The ruined poster of the Magnificent Marko still rested on the tabletop. Her eye was drawn to the two lines of text printed at the bottom of the poster. Luciana had barely even noticed them before – she’d always been more interested in the image of her grandfather. Now she stared, transfixed. Then she snatched up both parts of the poster.

  “Look!” she said, pointing. Below the picture was a white space with bold black words. It read:

  Tickets for all performances available only at the Peacock Theatre, Aldwych. See the Magnificent Marko in the most luxurious theatre in all of London!

  “The Peacock Theatre!” Charley exclaimed. “Like the peacock butterfly on the desk! That’s a bit of a coincidence, isn’t it?”

  “Maybe. Or perhaps it isn’t a coincidence at all.”

  “But if it isn’t –” Charley frowned – “then what does it mean?”

  Luciana sighed. “I don’t know.”

  The lunch bell rang, its loud tinkle echoing up the stairs, accompanied by Isabella’s voice.

  “Luciana? Charley? Lunch is on the table,” she called.

  “Come on,” Luciana said, hurriedly thrusting the device back into its pouch and looking around for somewhere to hide it. After a moment’s hesitation, she put it behind the cushion in her grandfather’s old chair.

  *

  “Luciana, I think we need to have a talk,” her grandmother said after supper that evening. “About Charley.”

  Luciana looked up from her book, surprised. “Why?” she asked. “What’s he done?”

  Isabella sighed. “He hasn’t done anything.”

  Luciana closed her book, puzzled. “What then?”

  They were sitting in the parlour, settled in their two familiar old armchairs. There was a fire burning in the grate and Luciana had forced herself into the room despite it, trying to cure herself of the fear that had settled on her shoulders. You’ve done it once, she kept telling herself. You can do it again. It’s nothing but a nightmare, and nightmares don’t mean anything. At the moment it was working, just as long as she didn’t look directly at the flames. Every time she did she saw that awful writhing figure, the one that haunted her dreams.

  Luciana had always loved this room, because it was so distinctly her grandmother’s, in the same way that the study was so clearly her grandfather’s. There was a cabinet in one corner, full of beautiful glass dishes tinted the colour of the roses that bloomed over the door of the vicarage in summer. Her grandmother had told her once that they had been handed down to her through generations and would one day belong to Luciana herself. There were paintings on the walls too, of elegant ladies with their hair done in elaborate styles. Each one was a distant ancestor, and when she’d been younger she had spent hours staring up at them, imagining herself in their extraordinary clothes and hats.

  Now her grandmother was staring into the fire. She seemed to be weighing her words carefully.

  “When you first came to us,” she began, “
I … didn’t know what to do. It was such a late age to be caring for a young child. Our friends’ children were all grown up. Marko and I were both worried that you wouldn’t have playmates of your own age. And besides, I felt that I needed help. Reverend Alders told us that his housekeeper, Agnes, had herself just had a child, and suggested that it could be a solution for the two of you to meet. I wasn’t sure at first, but right from the start, even before either of you could walk, it seemed you were destined to be friends. Charley’s mother put him down on that old rug in the drawing room next to you, and you looked at each other and laughed, and that was it.”

  Luciana smiled. “I am so glad that the Reverend had the idea,” she said. “I must thank him the next time I see him. I can’t imagine life without Charley in it.”

  Her grandmother’s face took on an uncomfortable expression. “I know, and that’s what worries me, Luciana,” she said. “I was so grateful not to be alone in the mission of raising you that I relied on Charley’s visits too much. Soon he was here every day, almost as much a part of the household as you were. Marko loved it too. He was never happier than when he could hear the two of you laughing at whatever game you had dreamed up. We got so used to hearing two sets of footsteps chasing up and down the stairs in this house that it seemed entirely normal. But we shouldn’t have let it carry on for so long. We shouldn’t have let it become so familiar.”

  “But he’s my friend,” Luciana said. “He’s my best friend. He’s a good boy, you’re always saying so.”

  Her grandmother sighed and passed one thin hand across her eyes. “He is a good boy, and I love him very much, but… You are both getting older now. You are thirteen. Soon you will no longer be children. And you must have noticed the differences in your situations.”

  “Our … situations?” Luciana repeated, mystified.

  “Charley’s mother is the vicar’s housekeeper, Luciana. They share an attic room, like any of the other vicarage servants. Soon he will have to go out to work himself – Mr Timms is already training him as a groundsman with a view to that being his profession. You, on the other hand…”

  “You’re saying that Charley and I can’t be friends?” she asked. “Just because he doesn’t have as much money as we do?”

  Her grandmother sighed. “I am saying that your lives are on different paths, and always have been. I am saying that sooner or later those paths will diverge, and that it may be better for you both to not be so in step when they do.”

  Luciana did not answer. Her gaze had blurred. “Did Grandfather think the same way?”

  Her grandmother was silent for a moment. “We … discussed it. He understood my concerns. And now the Magnificent Marko is gone and life must go on. I want you to have a good life, Luciana – a safe life, a secure life.”

  Luciana thought about this for a while, staring at the fire crackling in the grate. For the first time since Thursby’s visit she was not afraid to look directly at it; its flame matched the burning feeling in her heart. Then she stood up and walked to the door.

  “Luciana,” her grandmother said. “You understand that I have nothing against Charley, and I do not mean that you have to stop seeing him completely, just—”

  Luciana turned. “Charley isn’t just my friend,” she said. “He’s my brother. He’s always been my brother. He will always be my brother. Grandfather understood that, I think. And that’s all there is to it.”

  She left the parlour and went to her room. Luciana stayed there for the rest of the evening, thinking hard.

  Luciana spent the whole of the next day thinking through everything that had happened since Marko had died, and found herself forming an idea that could not be shifted. After all, until yesterday there had been only two people who had known that the secret drawer in the Magnificent Marko’s desk existed – the man who had made it and her grandfather. With her solving of the puzzle, Charley and Luciana made four. Four people in the whole world who knew the secret! When she thought back carefully, Luciana had realized that it was only after her first discovery of the desk’s concealed puzzle that her grandfather had begun to be really serious about teaching her how to identify his beloved butterflies. Surely the reason that her grandfather had been so keen to teach her about butterflies in the first place was so that she alone could decipher his puzzle? And if that was the case, how could she rest until she’d untangled the truth of what the mysterious device was?

  Besides, the more Luciana thought about it, the more she was convinced that the device they had found had to have something to do with the Golden Butterfly. It was too much of a coincidence that she had been able to solve the puzzle that had led her to the device just a day after Thursby and his cronies had come searching for her grandfather’s last and greatest trick. The two things had to be connected. She just had to work out how. Once she did, Luciana was convinced that she’d also learn the truth of what Thursby had done to make her grandfather leave the stage.

  What she needed was someone who could tell her what the device was and what it was for, and there was only one place she could think of where such a person might exist. So it was that early on Friday morning, before the sun was even up, Luciana was watching out of the window for Charley. She saw him leave the vicarage and instead of waiting for him to arrive, she pulled on her coat and boots and went out to meet him.

  It was February and England was still in the depths of winter. Snow had been pelting the village for days, and this morning it had begun again. Still, Luciana barely noticed as she forged her way through the orchard. The trees drooped beneath their burden, bare branches bending towards the ground as Luciana crunched her way beneath them.

  Charley saw her coming and waved.

  “Hello!” he called. “Fancied a walk?”

  “I need to talk to you,” she called back.

  They met at the stream. The splash and tinkle of the water seemed loud in the cold air.

  “What is it?” Charley asked with a laugh. “You look as if you’ve discovered all the gold of the Incas in your attic!”

  “I know what we need to do,” Luciana said, breathless. “We need to go to London. We need to go to the Peacock Theatre! It’s obvious, isn’t it?”

  Charley looked shocked. “You want to go to London?”

  “Of course! My grandfather performed there for years. If the answer to what the device is and how it fits in with the Golden Butterfly and Thursby is anywhere, it’s there.”

  “How will we get there?” Charley asked, looking unconvinced.

  “We’ll catch a train,” Luciana said impatiently. “The way we used to when we were younger. Don’t you remember?”

  “I only went with you once,” Charley told her. “When it was your birthday and you said that you wanted me to be allowed to come with you.”

  Luciana blinked in surprise. “Really?”

  Charley nodded. “Really.”

  “I thought you came with us all the time,” she said with a frown.

  “I only came that time because your grandma and grandpa paid for my train ticket,” Charley added. “It was far more money than my mother had to spare. And what about the carriage at the other end?”

  “The carriage?”

  “I remember there was a carriage waiting for us at the station. It took us straight to the theatre and then it took us back to the station again afterwards. Maybe we could walk from the station and back … but I don’t know the way to the theatre, do you? Or how long it would take.”

  Luciana bit her lip. “I hadn’t thought about any of that.”

  “I’ve got a little bit of money saved,” Charley said. “From my work with Mr Timms. What I’ve got might be enough for part of a ticket. But probably not all of it.”

  Luciana looked down at the stream beside which they stood, the water glinting against the glare of the white snow as it tumbled over the rocks. Her grandmother’s words echoed in her head. Surely you must have noticed the difference in your situations. Luciana pushed them away. She did
n’t want to think about the future her grandmother had suggested was just around the corner, especially if it was one without her best friend.

  “I haven’t got any money either,” she said. “Whenever I need something, Grandmother gives it to me or takes me shopping. But I can’t ask her for this – she’d never allow us to go alone and she won’t take us herself, not once she knows why I want to go.”

  They stood in silence for a few minutes. Somewhere in the trees a pair of ravens croaked and bickered about the cold. Luciana watched Charley as he frowned, deep in thought about something. His face was so familiar – she couldn’t imagine not seeing it every day. Her grandmother’s words tried to force their way back into Luciana’s head, and for a moment she wondered if she should tell Charley what Isabella had said. But she couldn’t bring herself to say the words. She knew how upset he would be and besides, talking about it would just make it more real.

  “I know a way we could earn the money,” Charley said eventually. “My mother wouldn’t approve and your grandmother certainly wouldn’t, but it would work.”

  “What is it?”

  “How many of your grandfather’s card tricks do you know?”

  “Twenty or thirty, perhaps. Why?”

  Charley hitched up his bag and slung it over his shoulder. “You could perform them for money.”

  Luciana frowned. “Where would I find a theatre willing to take me on?”

  “You don’t need a theatre. You just need a busy street. It’s Saturday tomorrow, which means it’s market day in Rotherton. The square there will be full. I bet you could gather a crowd. We’d ask them for a penny – or no, not even that – a ha’penny – each.”

  It was Luciana’s turn to be doubtful. “You really think they would pay?”

  “Definitely,” Charley said, his enthusiasm building as he warmed to the idea. “People love magic. And the idea of a girl performing it – that’s so strange they won’t be able to stay away. I can be the money-gatherer. I’ll tell them that if they’re not amazed, we’ll give them double their money back!”