The Forbidden Orchid Read online

  ALSO BY SHARON BIGGS WALLER

  A Mad, Wicked Folly

  VIKING

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  375 Hudson Street

  New York, New York 10014

  First published in the United States of America by Viking, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, 2016

  Copyright © 2016 by Sharon Biggs Waller

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  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA IS AVAILABLE

  eBook ISBN: 978-0-698-18797-9

  Version_1

  Contents

  Also By Sharon Biggs Waller

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Map

  Epigraph

  PART ONE: Edencroft, Kent—Winter 1859 ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  PART TWO: At Sea—Spring 1861 FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  PART THREE: China—Summer 1861 TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  EPILOGUE

  Author’s Note

  Bibliography

  Acknowledgments

  For my little sister Carrie Biggs

  And for my niece Patricia Noelle XinLan Biggs

  You are both my heart and soul

  “It broke one’s heart to think of man, the civilizer, wasting treasures in a few years to which savages and animals had done no harm for centuries.”

  —MARIANNE NORTH (1830–1890),

  Victorian traveler and botanical painter of tropical plant species in their natural habitat

  PART ONE

  Edencroft, Kent—Winter 1859

  ONE

  My father was a plant hunter—an adventurer—and I saw little of him my first fourteen years, even less the next two, but after I turned seventeen he became my whole world.

  He returned home once a year or so, as was his promise to our mother, venturing to our house in Kent each Christmas bearing strange gifts, such as a cachepot filled with prickly cacti, a geode—a large rock that split open to reveal a crystal treasure within—a brass ship’s compass, and once a hessian sack of foul-smelling compost, which my father called bat guano. All things a boy might love, but certainly not a girl, my mother said. And we were a house filled with girls, each of us named after a flower. There were nine sisters, all born around the same time, begotten during my father’s annual visit home. I came to regard Christmas as a herald, trumpeting the arrival of yet another sibling in late summer, most likely a girl. One more flower to add to a bouquet already bristling with unwanted blooms.

  One would think my father would be happy in a house surrounded by females named after flowers, but women and flowers are not the same. No matter how much rose attar eau de toilette or lavender powder we wore, we could not compete with the real thing. Flowers lured my father to faraway lands filled with savages, barbarian princes, exotic ladies in silk saris, and even marauding cannibals. My father wrote to us of his time tramping up and down hill and dale, canoeing rushing rivers and climbing rocky mountain passes in search of an elusive bloom heard of but never seen by a Westerner. His plant hunting continued through my childhood until September of 1860 when my father met his misfortune. Not through the poison-tipped arrow of a pygmy warrior, but by his own miscalculation. His headstrong behavior had come home to claim its due. Or so my mother said. My father said nothing.

  The last time I saw him was in 1859 when he came to Christmas toting a large, mysterious box wrapped in brown paper. The year the youngest, Dahlia, was conceived. And the year I was sixteen.

  Mamma always looked forward to Papa’s visit, growing more and more excited as the date drew near. Instead of visiting the church every day, as was her habit, she spent those hours at her sewing basket, updating her wardrobe in the latest style. When the day approached, she sat near the window peering out at the street, waiting for Papa to arrive. He had always walked from the train station before, but this year he arrived in the back of a delivery cart, his long legs dangling down, his arm across the reason for the cart: the package wrapped in brown paper and tied with rough twine. Although Papa dressed in an elegant tartan waistcoat and a black coat, his bushy beard, befitting his status as an explorer, always gave him a raffish look.

  Mamma rushed outside and threw herself in Papa’s arms. And as usual, after a cursory hello to us, he whisked Mamma off, and we did not see them again until lunchtime.

  “That shan’t last long,” Violetta said, her face grim. “If this rapprochement continues to Boxing Day, I shall be surprised.”

  “Violetta,” I chided. But she didn’t respond. Instead she plonked herself down at the piano and began playing Brahms’s Piano Sonata no. 3, crashing her hands down on the keys a little harder than Mr. Brahms required for the somber piece.

  Although Violetta was a devotee of gothic novels, she didn’t often have fits of melodrama. But over the years she had stopped believing that our parents’ affection toward one another would endure. Their love balanced on a knife-edge, and it took little to make it topple to the ground. I suppose Violetta remained cynical because it was too painful to wish for something that could never be.

  Two days later, on Christmas morning, Papa presented the mysterious package.

  He stood, his strong hands clasped behind his back, his eyes shining, as he watched my little sisters strip the brown butcher paper away to reveal a domed box made of glass, filled with miniature plants, dainty furniture, and tiny handmade twig dolls. There were ferns, mosses, and jumbles of strange-looking plants, including a clump of tangled roots that perched atop a little carved statue’s head like a wig. Peony, Lily, and Delphine stared at the box, unable to make either head nor tail of it.

  “Well now,” Papa said. “How do you like that, my girls?”

  “What is it, Papa?” six-year-old Lily asked.

  Papa looked taken aback. “Isn’t it obvious?” he said in a booming voice. “It’s a dollhouse. I made it from a Wardian case! An absolute miracle of an invention. Plants can travel across oceans in Mr. Ward’s cases remaining as fresh as the day they were collected. They are the very reason why your papa is the success he is.”

  Lily’s eyes filled with tears. The other two hid behind my mother’s skirts. Two-year-old Fleur didn’t care one way or the other. She remained on the floor, happily banging blocks together.

  My mother frowned at the little glasshouse. “Reginald,” she said. “Is this the . . . dollhouse?” I could hear dismay prickling through her voice. I knew she had written Papa a letter asking him to purchase a dollhouse at Hamley’s toy shop in London for the little ones.

  “I thought the girl
s would prefer this, my dear,” he said. I could see the doubt in his eyes. My heart cracked a little to think of his hands, so deft when handling delicate blooms, clumsily dressing the twig dolls in little scraps of material, gluing acorn caps to sticks, all in the hope of pleasing his daughters. He had no inkling that the contents of such a dollhouse would be torn to bits under my sisters’ eager hands. Their fingers, sticky with jam, would smear the glass, and the little dolls would be lost amongst their jumble of toys in the nursery.

  “It’s a little fairy garden, Lily.” I knelt next to her and put my arm around her thin shoulders. She shoved her fingers in her mouth and looked at me, her chin quivering. “Can you not see the little fairies Papa has caught for you?” She pulled her fingers from her mouth and reached out a curious finger to touch the glass. I folded it back down. “Mustn’t touch, darling. Mustn’t disturb the fairies.”

  “Fairies,” she repeated. Her breath fogged the glass. “Where are the fairies?”

  “Just there, darling.” I pointed at the sticks. “Can you not see them hiding?” Lily leaned closer. Peony and Delphine crept out from behind my mother and joined her, staring into the tiny jungle.

  “I thought little girls would like such a thing, Elodie,” Papa said to me later.

  “It’s lovely, Papa. They are only young and don’t understand how to look after such a treasure.”

  It was a kind gift, made from my father’s heart, but I was sure I was the only one who saw it as such. My mother, constantly disappointed by my father, saw everything he did as a slight. But I didn’t blame her. Papa could be a difficult man.

  Mamma had married my father when he was a student at Oxford, studying to become a priest. She was a bishop’s daughter, and for her the church was everything. But Papa, like many men of the church, studied the natural world as a fancy. Inspired by the writings of Mr. Charles Darwin, he went on a voyage to the Canary Islands of Spain, where he collected cacti. He was so good at acquiring plants that he was hired by wealthy men to gather plants for them to display in their fashionable glasshouses. Papa turned away from the church and from God and to a life of plant hunting. The year he turned away from the church, Mamma lost her firstborn, a son. Since then she has only given birth to girls, and Mamma believes this is God’s way of punishing Papa.

  Later on Christmas evening, Mamma and Papa had a horrible row. It was over the simplest thing: Mamma’s choice of wallpaper. Mamma had recently papered the youngest children’s room in a brilliant and beautiful shade of green, like the brightest emerald. Mamma had been proud of the room, but Papa was incensed. As soon as he laid eyes on the walls he tore the paper down, exclaiming and shouting. Mamma followed behind him, shrieking and grabbing at his hands.

  “Poison, this is poison, don’t you understand?” Papa said, tearing a long strip of paper down, exposing the whitewashed wall behind it. Some of the paper clung stubbornly to the walls, as though taking my mother’s side.

  “How can you say such a thing?” Mamma said, sinking onto Lily’s bed in a flood of tears. “It’s beautiful. Why do you ruin everything that’s beautiful?”

  Papa stared at her, stricken. He started to speak and then saw me standing in the doorway. He straightened up. “Elodie. My dear. Do you understand why I took the paper down? Do you know what makes this paper green?”

  I stepped inside the room and looked at my mother. Her eyes were red from crying. “I . . . from the green dye, I expect, Papa,” I replied hesitantly.

  “This brilliant green can only be gotten from copper arsenite,” he said. “As I have told your mother repeatedly.” He cast an angry look at her.

  “Arsenite?” I repeated.

  “Arsenic. Poison. The paper puts off vapors that can cause constriction of the throat. And then death.” Papa shook the clump of paper. “This . . . this prevalent color, most likely papering acres and miles of British walls, will kill people. Mark my words. I told your mother no when she wrote to me with her request to paper the room, but she’s only gone behind my back . . .” Papa’s words trailed off, and he looked down at the crumpled paper in his hands.

  “No one believes that is true,” Mamma said through sobs. “The paper man said he’d eat a pound of it himself.”

  Papa’s face turned red with rage. “If the blaggard were here, I’d cram a pound of it down his throat!” he shouted. “And how can you take his word but not mine?”

  I stood there, a few feet inside the room, unable to speak, almost in a trance, viewing the tableau as someone else would see it. Mamma sitting on Lily’s bed, her bell-shaped skirts flowing over the tiny mattress, staring down at her slippers in despair. Papa, standing with one hand braced against the wall, a wad of green paper in the other, and an expression of anger mixed with confusion on his face. My parents were both beautiful: Mamma with hair light as a sunbeam, Papa’s dark as a raven’s wing. Mamma lovely and delicate, Papa handsome and strong. I used to think my parents were Staffordshire porcelain dolls come to life, stepping down off the mantelpiece, hand in hand, to become human. But now I think there was a mistake. The dolls were mismatched, created in different workshops but yet placed inside the same box.

  I knew then that they really weren’t arguing over wallpaper; I knew they were arguing over something that was far deeper and far more destructive.

  Mamma went to her room and shut the door behind her. Papa closed himself in the children’s room and finished stripping off the paper. My sister Violetta and I took all the children, frightened by the shouting, into our bedroom and made them beds on the floor and read them stories until they fell asleep.

  Unable to sleep myself, I went to the kitchen and made a pot of tea. I’d forgotten my slippers upstairs with the children, and so my feet were bare on the cold tiles. I sat on the chair and tucked my feet under my nightgown, cupping the mug in my hands.

  “Father is beastly,” Violetta said. She stood in the doorway holding my slippers in her hands, her long dark hair hanging in a braid over one shoulder. “Is there any tea left?”

  I pushed the pot toward her. She handed me my slippers and then went to fetch a cup from the scullery. Presently she returned, and I poured her tea.

  “Papa isn’t beastly, Violetta,” I said. “He feels the wallpaper is poison, and I’m inclined to agree with him. But I do think he was wrong to rip it down like that. He should have been more tactful.”

  Violetta snorted. “Tactful? May as well ask a monkey to be tactful.” She blew on her tea and took a cautious sip.

  “That’s unkind. Papa thought the children were in danger. Mamma saw her beautiful paper in ruins. The two had their own views on the matter, and they are both very passionate people. It was inevitable that they should become overly emotional.”

  Violetta eyed me over the cup and then sighed. She set her teacup down and dragged her shawl around her shoulders. “How can a color become poison? It’s absurd!”

  “How can water become poison? How can gas become poison?” I said. “There are many things we don’t understand. Papa is a man of science, and he loves beauty, despite what Mamma says, so he’d be the last person to destroy something if he didn’t think it important to do so.”

  “He did it to hurt Mamma,” Violetta said, unwilling to see any other side in the matter. She picked her cup up. “And I shan’t forgive him. I hope he never comes back.”

  “Violetta!” I chided, but she turned her face away.

  My heart ached over the division of our home. I tried to make it better, but the cracks were too wide, too difficult to bridge. But I knew myself. I knew I would not stop trying.

  PAPA LEFT THE FOLLOWING MORNING, SAYING NOTHING TO MY mother and only a cursory good-bye to us. The little ones’ eyes grew wide when Papa approached to kiss them, so he let them be. Violetta bobbed a curtsy and kissed his cheek, but her face was stone. I alone saw him out.

  He held his hat in his hand, an old felt
homburg that looked as though it had been sat on once too often. “You understand me, don’t you, my dear?” Uncertainty skittered over his face. “You understand why the paper had to go?”

  “I do, Papa.” I hadn’t the heart to tell him he should have been gentler and kinder when tearing the paper down. I knew that worry and fear can make people act in ways they wouldn’t ordinarily.

  He smiled, and it was the saddest smile I had ever seen. He put his battered hat on his head and fumbled in his satchel, pulling out a book. He handed it to me. “I meant to give this to you on Christmas morning, but I wasn’t sure your mother would approve.”

  The book Papa handed me was called On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life by Charles Darwin.

  “Have you heard of this book, Elodie?” Papa asked, his face eager. “Mr. Darwin published it in November. Quite extra-ordinary. I went round to the bookshop and secured a copy, and I’m quite glad that I did. The book sold out immediately.” He took the book back and flipped through a few pages until he found the one he wanted and turned the book to face me. “Here Darwin makes a case for transmutation of species through natural selection. He says that every plant is shaped perfectly for its own pollinator, the two evolving side by side. That everything on the earth evolves according to its needs.”

  I took the book from him, glancing at the page he had sought. I had heard of this book. The deacon of our church, Bernard Wainwright, had preached a sermon against it recently, claiming that Mr. Darwin was trying kill God. I should have handed it straight back to Papa, but I wanted to read it. I wanted to read it very much, if only to see what all the fuss was about. I had been taught that God had created the world and all the creatures within it. But I also knew that people had discovered ancient creatures not mentioned in the Bible, in rocks throughout the world, even in our own England. These creatures no longer existed, and no one could explain them. Many people, even those in the church, were saying this proved stories in the Bible were meant to be parables and not to be taken literally.