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- Herausgeber: Little Tiger Press
- Kategorie: Für Kinder und Jugendliche
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022
Living among the flowers and ferns of Kew Gardens, Katy has always dreamed of more – of the sky and the stars and the sea. Unfortunately for Katy, her father doesn't understand. He says young girls should be content to stay at home, not go off gallivanting around the world.So when news reaches London of a meteorite falling in the faraway land of Brazil and an expedition being put together to find it, Katy knows it's her chance to follow her dreams and prove her father wrong. And winning a place on the trip is just the start of her extraordinary voyage on the trail of a fallen star…A thrilling historical adventure from the author of THE HOUSE OF HIDDEN WONDERS, perfect for fans of Katherine Woodfine, Lucy Worsley, Jennifer Bell and Robin StevensPraise for THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY:"Touching on issues of class and gender, its main purpose is to bewitch and enthral." – Financial Times"A perfectly paced and wonderfully written tale of mystery and magic." – Sinéad O'Hart, author of THE EYE OF THE NORTH and THE STAR-SPUN WEB
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For Nova and Jago, little stars in their own sky.
Contents
The SS Alerte
Chapter One
The storm blew up without warning as they rounded the cape, a jagged seam of dark sky splitting the heavens above them as thunder rolled over the horizon. A vicious wind cut down upon the mainsail, tugging back and forth at the rigging with a snap-snap-crack-snap-snap-snap. A cold rain angled from the clouds, a thousand icy pinpricks stabbing at Katy’s face as she fought the rudder.
“Come about! Come about!”
The storm was a writhing, living thing all around them, tearing at her cheeks until they were raw, stealing her breath so that her lungs ached. Between the rain lashing at her face and her eyes watering, Katy could barely see. Still, she held on fast to the wheel. If they lost the Falcon now—
“Hard-a-starboard, lass!” the captain bellowed over the sound of the black waves crashing and splitting against the hull. “Run along the wind! We’ve got to get clear!”
“We’ll have to bend the foresail,” Katy yelled back as she battled to keep the yacht’s nose from turning with the wind. They were too close to the land’s hidden shoal of jagged rocks, far too close.
“Aye!”
“We’ve got to unbend the storm sail too!”
“Aye, lass, aye!”
If they couldn’t get their mainsail down, it would either rip from the force of the storm or the wind would catch it and smash them against the rocks. The storm sail would withstand heavy wind but they’d left it bent away because just an hour ago the glass had been set fair. It was half the size of the mainsail – it’d give them control without leaving a huge target for the whipping wind. But they were short-handed, and doing anything in the middle of a gale, with the sun almost below the horizon already, with the boat rocking from side to side and the sails overhead still fully deployed, was—
“Katy, your mama is coming…”
Katy blinked. The roaring storm dissipated into the warm evening air, leaving only the see-saw melody of the birds singing the world to sleep, the calm waters of Kew Gardens’ pond, and her grandfather, wading after the wooden model of the yacht Falcon that was his most prized possession. She turned to see her friend Edie behind her on the grassy bank, still sitting on the wool blanket that Grandma Peg had given her to keep Edie’s skirts out of the dirt.
Katy lifted one hand to shield her eyes from the last gleaming rays of summer sun and saw her mother approaching across the lawn from the direction of the herbarium.
“What are you all still doing out here?” Mary Willacott called as she got closer, her voice full of laughter. “Have you forgotten the time again? Grandma Peg will have dinner ready, you know!”
“Storm lesson,” Katy said as she scrambled back up the muddy bank while her grandfather scooped the Falcon from the water. “Granddad wants me to know how to handle the yacht in bad weather. Ugh –” Katy wrinkled her nose as she tried to squeeze water from her sodden skirt – “this would be so much easier if I were wearing trousers, Mama! Won’t you talk to Papa again for me? I could have one of Stefan’s old pairs, he’d never even miss them!”
“Katy!” Edie said, shocked. “You can’t wear trousers.”
“Why not?”
“You’re a lady.”
Katy’s mother laughed. “You should listen to Edie, Katy. She makes a very sensible point.”
“Pfft,” said Katy, flopping down on the blanket beside her oldest friend.
Ned Dixon dripped bits of waterweed as he climbed out of the pond, hefting the model ship under one arm. His fingers were as gnarled as the bark of a tree in the Palm House and deeply tanned after a life spent at sea beneath the sun.
“And you, Grandpa Ned,” Mary Willacott scolded gently. “You do nothing to discourage this wild streak of Katy’s, do you? You know her father does not approve.”
“Ach,” Ned said dismissively. “I want Katy here to know just how important it is to practise these things in port, in good weather, that’s all.” He looked down at his granddaughter. “Now, the storm sail. What do you think of that?”
Katy considered. “It should have been sent flying rather than left bent. Then all we would have had to do is lash it down, rather than get it out of its mooring.”
“Pre-cisely!” Grandpa Ned clapped her on the shoulder, grinning proudly. “She’s a natural, Mary! A natural!”
Katy’s mother laughed again, looking down at Edie. “Poor Edie, have you been sitting here all this time, just watching? You must be bored stiff!”
“It’s all right, Mrs Willacott,” Edie said. “It was only supposed to be an hour but I think Katy got carried away.”
“Sorry,” Katy said. “I did tell you to bring something with you to read if you didn’t want to get into the water with us, didn’t I? And I offered you my copy of Fran Brocklehurst’s latest article but you didn’t want it.”
“What’s the point in me reading it?” Edie retorted. “You’re going to spend all evening talking at me about it anyway. You’ll go on and on about it, same as always, until my brains are so bored they’ll try escaping through my ears!”
“Bored?” Katy said, outraged.
“Yes, bored,” Edie told her. “Francesca Brocklehurst is boring. There, I said it. I’m sorry, Katy, but that’s how I feel.”
Katy looked up at her mother and raised her eyebrows as high on her forehead as they would go. She and Edie had known each other since they were babies and they always used to like the same things. That seemed to be changing more and more recently, and Katy could make no sense of it at all.
“Not everyone likes the same things you do, my dear,” Mary Willacott reminded her daughter.
“But Fran Brocklehurst is the bee’s knees,” Katy declared. “That’s a fact.”
To Katy it just wasn’t possible that someone wouldn’t be fascinated by Fran Brocklehurst and her adventures. Brocklehurst’s articles, which appeared in one of the daily London newspapers, were full of important topics such as what to do if one had been bitten by a deadly snake (ever since she’d read that one, Katy had been trying to convince her parents she needed to carry a penknife with her at all times, so she would be properly equipped for this eventuality, but for some reason they didn’t think this was a good idea) and better things to do with a lady’s bonnet than wearing it on one’s head (for example, using it to catch fish in the event of one being shipwrecked and washed up on a desert island). Who wouldn’t want to read about those things? How could anyone find them boring?
“Well, then, here’s something that’ll make you smile, Katy,” said Mary Willacott. “Miss Brocklehurst will actually be coming here tomorrow, to talk to your old mama. How about that?”
Katy gaped at her mother for a moment, astonished, and then scrambled to her feet. “No!”
Mary Willacott laughed. “Yes! She’s coming to interview me for an article she’s writing about women in the sciences.”
“Can I come and meet her, Mama? Can I?” Katy begged, fizzing with excitement. “Please say yes. Please!”
“Of course you can,” said her mother. “I’m sure she’d like to talk to the next generation of women botanists for her article. You can show her how you’ve already begun your training.”
This wasn’t quite what Katy had in mind. What she wanted to do was talk to the journalist about all the places she’d been and all the wonderful things she’d seen. It might help Katy work out how she was going to do the same herself.
Chapter Two
The four of them walked back to Rose Cottage together beneath the setting sun. Katy’s home stood at the very edge of Kew Gardens, separated from the park’s lush landscape by a sturdy hedge of copper beech that had a gate set into it. The house was too small, really, to be comfortable for the family. Grandma Peg and Grandpa Ned, Katy, Katy’s father Josiah, her mother Mary and her older brother Stefan all lived within its faintly ramshackle walls. But the cottage came without a rent, because both Mary Willacott and Grandpa Ned worked in the botanical gardens. Ned was one of Kew’s private constables and Mary Willacott was a botanical taxonomist, which meant that she worked in the herbarium, preserving and identifying the many specimens of plants that were sent back by naturalists from expeditions that travelled all over the globe.
Josiah Willacott, meanwhile, was an assistant archaeologist for the British Museum. Every day he took the long train journey from Kew village into Bloomsbury, where the great building of the museum was located. Once there, he would make his way to the basement laboratory rooms. Katy had been to the museum many times but had never been allowed into those secret spaces behind the public galleries. She imagined them to be full of gleaming, wonderful artefacts shipped back from all over the world. There must be bones and fossils, spears and masks, stone carvings that would tower over Katy’s head. She imagined the many colours of precious stones gleaming in shafts of light, the huge, bright feathers of incredible birds, the paper-thin skins shed by immense, diamond-scaled snakes.
“There you are!” called Grandma Peg from the cottage’s back step, as they all trooped through the gate. “Dinner’s ready to go on the table. I thought you’d run off with the fairy folk or summat. Come ye in and scrub those paws of yourn before it spoils!”
Grandma Peg was a small, sturdy whirlwind of a woman, barely taller than Katy, with rosy cheeks and wild grey hair. She disappeared back into the house before any of them could answer. By the time they had toed off their boots and washed their hands, she was hefting a large, steaming pot of something that smelled delicious on to the big oak table in the middle of the kitchen, at which Josiah and Stefan already sat.
Mealtimes were always a little raucous at Rose Cottage because everyone was always eager to tell everyone else about their day, and so they all ended up talking at once. Katy’s favourite thing to hear about, though, was what her father had been doing at the museum. Josiah Willacott was a tall man with curly brown hair and warm brown eyes to match. It was her father who had given Katy her first notebook and watercolours, and ever since Katy had been old enough to walk, had encouraged her to make sketches and notes of the treasures she found around Kew, as if she were a proper naturalist, going out to explore the wide and wonderful world.
“What have you been working on today, Papa?” she asked, as they all began to eat.
“A farmer in Lowestoft turned up a hoard of Roman coins and they have been shipped to me,” he said. “They need cleaning before we can identify what time period they came from. But tell me about your day, Katy. How is the training at the herbarium going?”
“It’s going well, Papa,” Katy said. “Yesterday I practised with a rose that one of the gardeners let me cut. It’s in the drying press now. I didn’t go with Mama today though.”
Her father was surprised. “Oh? Why not? Wasn’t there a half day at school? I thought the Schminke expedition specimens had arrived from their trip to the Himalayas? With no school this afternoon, surely it would have been the perfect time to join your mother?”
“Edie is here for the night, Papa, for the Perseid meteor shower,” Katy said. “And it was a sunny day! We wanted to be outside.”
Her father smiled. “Fair enough. But really,” he said to Mary Willacott as much as their daughter, “I would have thought the Schminke expedition too good a training opportunity to pass up.”
“I know, my dear,” Mary Willacott said mildly. “I’ll make sure Katy gets plenty of time with the expedition specimens. She has made a very good start. She already knows how to make sure a specimen is properly dried and fastened to the specimen sheets. Her notes are also excellent.”
“I was wondering, Papa,” Katy ventured. “If I could come with you for some training too? At the museum? I could help you to clean the coins you just mentioned. I’ve been practising with the brush you gave me, and—”
“I’m sorry, Katy,” said her father. “But you know that’s out of the question. I’ve told you before – The British Museum is a serious scientific institution. One can’t just wander in and out of it.”
Katy frowned. “The herbarium is a serious scientific institution too.”
“Of course it is,” said Josiah Willacott, with a sigh. “I didn’t mean to suggest it wasn’t. But really, you must stop asking me about this. It would not be appropriate for me to take you into work with me – and that’s the long and short of it.”
“You take Stefan,” Katy said sulkily.
“He’s older,” her father said, something Katy was often reminded of but to her made no difference at all.
“And he’s a boy,” Katy pointed out.
“Katy,” said her father, in his warning voice. “Now that’s enough, please.”
“Did you hear, Peg?” Grandpa Ned asked, changing the subject. “Our Mary is to have a visit from a journalist about her work tomorrow!”
Peg’s bushy eyebrows rose almost to her silver-grey hair. “A journalist, is it? Well, Mary, I hope you’re not shy in coming forward with what that place owes to you. Work your fingers to the bone over those specimens sent back from all over, you do, and what thanks do you get for it? There’s no one naming a flower after our Mary, is there?”
“I don’t mind, Mother,” Mary Willacott said. “I’m happy as I am.”
“She’d have to go out and find something entirely new herself before they would do that, anyway, Grandma,” Katy said, stuffing the last of slice of her bread into her mouth, eager to be done with dinner. She thought of all the specimen sheets she and her mother would be checking over from the Schminke expedition. There was Professor Schminke and his assistants, traipsing all over the world having fun and back here at home were Mary and Katy Willacott, looking after what they’d found, never going further than the village. She sighed gustily. “And we won’t find a new genus in the rose garden at Kew, that’s for sure.”
“You shouldn’t speak with your mouth full,” Stefan told her from across the table, while doing exactly that. At sixteen he was only Katy’s elder by two years but he – the same as everyone else, it seemed to Katy – liked to pretend that made a big difference. “It’s not ladylike.”
Katy stuck her tongue out at him.
“Katy,” her father admonished.
“Sorry, Papa,” Katy said, and then promptly stuck her tongue out again.
Stefan shook his head. “No one will ever want to marry you.”
“Good,” Katy declared. “For there will never be anyone I want to marry.” She finished her stew and leaned over to peer into Edie’s bowl, which was also empty. “Come on,” she said, to her friend, who had been as quiet as a mouse ever since they sat down. “Let’s go upstairs.”
“Er – I think not,” said her father sternly. “There are dishes to do. Peg shouldn’t have to do them all herself!”
“It’s all right,” said Mary Willacott. “The girls can run along. I’ll help Mother in the kitchen.”
“Or Stefan could,” Katy pointed out, earning herself a black look from her brother.
“One day, Katy,” said her father, with a long-suffering sigh. “That lip of yours will get you into trouble and I won’t be around to get you out of it.”
“Sorry, Papa.” Katy grabbed Edie’s hand and pulled her friend out of the room before they found themselves stuck at the sink.
Chapter Three
Katy’s bedroom was in the attic, under the eaves of Rose Cottage’s roof. To get to it, she and Edie had to climb a ladder propped in the hallway of the upstairs landing.
“I’ll never understand why your bedroom is all the way up here,” Edie said as she pulled herself into the space and then dusted off her hands.
“What do you mean?” Katy asked, looking around. “This is the best room in the house!”
Katy loved her bedroom precisely because it was so odd. You could only really stand up straight right in the middle because the room was an ‘A’ shape and the ceiling sloped all the way down to the floor on either side. But it was a great deal bigger than even her parents’ own bedroom, which meant there was plenty of space for Katy’s desk at the far end, against one of the two flat walls that formed either end of Rose Cottage. Piled on the desk were all the items Katy had found for her collection – feathers, animal skulls, interesting stones, a coin from the riverbank she thought might actually be Viking – that were now patiently waiting to be properly catalogued with sketches and observational notes in her beloved field notebook. Her bed was at the opposite end of the room, on the other side of the hatch that she and Edie had just climbed through, against the other flat wall.
Best of all, though, was the big glass skylight that was set into one side of the sloping roof. Katy went to it now, cranking the lever and pushing it open. Beyond, in the festival of shadows that were gathering as twilight fell, spread the whole of Kew Gardens. There was the magnificent glass structure of the Palm House, gleaming in the last glance of sunlight. There was the elegant brickwork of Hunter House, the herbarium where her mother worked, standing proudly amid the lawns and plant beds. From up here, Katy almost felt as if she were a bird, soaring above the world – as if all she had to do was spread her wings and she’d be able to fly anywhere she wanted, anywhere at all.
Edie came to stand beside her. “It’s a good view,” her friend admitted.
“It’s going to get even better,” Katy told her.
A breeze brushed past them and Edie shivered a little. “It’s getting chilly, though. Are you sure you want to go out there?”
Katy was shocked. “But it’s the Perseids,” she said. “We do this every year!”
“I know, Katy, but—”
“We’ll take blankets,” Katy promised. “Come on – you’ve got to let me show you this Fran Brocklehurst story first. I just don’t believe you can possibly find her boring.”
She led the way to her desk. On the wall above it, Katy had used some of Grandma Peg’s dressmaking pins to fasten her favourite of Fran Brocklehurst’s adventures where she could see them, always.
“I think it might be her best one yet,” she said, pointing to a new page she’d pinned up. It had an illustration of a small figure in a big hat sitting astride a large black horse. “She rode the whole of the pilgrim trail from Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port in France to Santiago de Compostela in Portugal all on her own. Nearly five hundred miles! On a horse! On her own!”
Edie frowned. “Why?”
“Because she wanted to!”
Edie wrinkled her nose. “Where did she sleep?”
“There are hostels along the way for pilgrims. And she took a tent too and camped sometimes.”
“Ugh,” said Edie. “That must have been horrible!”
“No! It must have been wonderful!” Katy said. “Just think – no one to tell you what to do or when to do it, no one making you wash up the dishes or saying that you can’t do this or do that…”
“Flies, heat, dust,” Edie countered. “Whatever did she eat? She must have had an awful twist in her back from all that riding too.”
“She didn’t ride side-saddle,” Katy said. “She rode astride, like a man. Look, like in the picture!”
Edie stared at the illustration and shook her head. “She always sounds so strange.”
“She’s not,” Katy insisted. “She’s brilliant, and when I meet her tomorrow I’m going to ask her how I can do all the things that she’s done.” She lit the oil lamp beside her bed and then picked up two big woollen blankets. “Come on. Let’s get out there. I don’t want to miss anything.”
They scrambled out of the skylight and on to the old tiles of Rose Cottage’s roof. The night was clear and quiet. Overhead, a million jewels of ancient light glittered and winked. The stars were spread out forever, as if time had unspooled itself, opened itself entirely for anyone who cared enough to look up and see.
“My mother and father would have a fit if they knew we did this, you know,” Edie said, lying on her back and looking up at the universe above them. “They still think we just lean out of your window and look up. They’d never let me do half the things Mr and Mrs Willacott let you do.”
“What do you mean?” Katy asked, staring up at the sky. “I don’t get to do anything. If I’m not at school I’m either in the herbarium with Mama or helping Grandma Peg with something around the house. I’m not like Stefan, who gets to take the cart into the village to meet his friends whenever he wants, and goes into London with Papa to see his work.”
Suddenly, a pinpoint of speeding light pierced the night sky, an ice-white streak almost too fast for the eye to catch. Katy nudged Edie and pointed. “Look!”
“Oh, I missed it! I’ll catch the next one.”
Sure enough, a moment later there came another streak of light, and then another, and another. The sky was full of shooting stars.
“It really is a shower,” Edie breathed. “What happens to the people standing underneath them when they land?” She shuddered. “I’ve always wondered that. What if one falls through the roof and on to me while I’m asleep?”
“That will never happen,” Katy said with a laugh. “Meteorites – that’s what meteoroids are called when they make it through the Earth’s atmosphere – are very rare. Even if they could reach Earth, we probably wouldn’t notice. These ones are just tiny particles of debris, like dust, that’s all, left by the Swift-Tuttle comet as it passed through the edge of our solar system. It’s only because they look so bright as they burn up against Earth’s atmosphere that we can see them.”
Edie sighed. “You’ve got so many things floating around in that head of yours, Katy, it’s amazing.” Her friend was quiet for a moment and then said, “You didn’t mean what you said earlier, did you? About not wanting to get married?”
Katy frowned. “I don’t know. It’s definitely not the only thing I want to do.”
“But you know already that it won’t be the only thing you do,” Edie said. “You’re going to be like your mother, aren’t you? You’ll become a botanist and work with her in the herbarium. We might end up with houses next to each other in the village! Wouldn’t that be fun?”
Katy said nothing to that. She didn’t tell her friend what she was thinking: that no matter how hard she tried, Katy couldn’t imagine herself spending every day in the herbarium, cataloguing specimens of exotic plants that someone else had harvested. Instead, she imagined herself on a great black horse, riding across the plains of a distant, unknown country, gloriously alone and free under a sky full of stars.
Chapter Four
Next morning, Katy, Mary, Grandpa Ned and Edie left Rose Cottage while the dew was still pooling on the blades of grass beneath their feet. Together, they set off across the lawns of Kew.
“Thank you for letting me stay, Mrs Willacott,” Edie said with a yawn.
“You’re welcome, my dear.” Mary Willacott smiled. “Although I’m not sure your mother would have approved if she’d known you were going to spend most of the night on our roof. Did the two of you get any sleep at all?”
“Oh, it was worth it,” Edie said. “Watching the Perseid meteor shower with Katy is always an adventure! I can put up with no sleep for one night a year to see all those shooting stars.”
“It doesn’t have to just be one night a year,” Katy pointed out. “It’ll be going for another few weeks. The shower isn’t even at its strongest yet. That’s always spectacular. You should stay another night, Edie.”
Edie laughed. “Oh, I don’t think so. I do need some sleep!”
The two girls hugged goodbye at the point where the meandering paths through Kew went in different directions. Katy waved as Grandpa Ned and Edie disappeared into the trees, heading towards the village that stood on the outskirts of the park, while she and her mother made their way to the herbarium.
“I’m so glad that you and Edie have stayed friends for so long, Katy,” Mary Willacott said as they walked.
“Me too,” said Katy. “Although…”
Her mother looked down at her. “Although what?”
Katy sighed. “We used to always think the same about everything. But now we don’t. Edie doesn’t seem to want to do anything with her life, Mama. She just wants to grow up, get married and have children.”
Her mother lifted one arm and slipped it across Katy’s shoulders, pulling her daughter to her side as they walked. “My darling, that sounds to me as if she’s got something very significant indeed that she wants to do with her life.”
“But it’s so … boring,” Katy protested.
“You might find you feel differently as you get older, Katy,” her mother said as they walked on. “And you must try to understand that not everyone wants the same things that you do. Edie wanting to be a wife and mother doesn’t make her interests any less important than yours. You’re just growing up to be different people, that’s all. It doesn’t mean you shouldn’t stay friends, just that you’re becoming yourselves.”
“But—”
“Mrs Mary Willacott?”
A figure had appeared on the path in front of them, a smiling young woman with a freckled face and snub nose beneath bright brown eyes. She didn’t look much older than Stefan. Her auburn hair was cropped scandalously short to curl around her ears. She was dressed in a man’s white shirt and a tan-coloured waistcoat, which were worn beneath a fustian jacket of nut brown and paired with trousers of coarse twill that were tucked into a pair of battered leather boots. In one hand she held a notebook and pencil, and in the other was the strap of the battered leather satchel that was slung over her left shoulder. She looked sturdy, dependable and ready for anything. Katy liked her immediately.
“You must be Miss Francesca Brocklehurst,” said Mary Willacott.
“Oh, it’s just Fran,” Fran said with a wide smile as she reached out to shake Mary Willacott’s hand. “Francesca always sounds as if I should be wielding a lace bobbin rather than a pen. And who wants to be a ‘miss’ when you could be a ‘hit’?”
“It’s nice to meet you, Fran,” Katy’s mother said warmly. “This is my daughter Katy. I thought you might like to talk to her too as she’s recently begun her own training in botany. I should add that she’s an avid reader of your articles.”
Fran turned to Katy with an even wider smile, and Katy felt her stomach turn over in a fit of nerves. “Well!” the journalist exclaimed. “A reader, how wonderful. It’s lovely to meet you, Katy.”
Katy meant to say sensible things like hello and it’s good to meet you and I’m such an admirer of your work, but instead what came out of her mouth was:
“I thought you’d be older!”
Fran laughed. “A lot of people say that.”
“Come on,” said Mary Willacott. “Let’s head inside and Katy and I can give you the tour.”
The herbarium at Kew was in Hunter House, an imposing three-storey building of red brick that had been completely given over to the storage of the gardens’ specimen collection.
“The collection has grown so much in recent years that a whole new wing had to be built,” Mary Willacott told Fran as they entered the building. “It opened last year.”
“My goodness,” Fran Brocklehurst said as they walked into the main part of the herbarium. She stopped on the threshold, looking around. “How magnificent.”
The three floors of the building had been opened up – from the floor where they stood it was possible to see right up to the angular space of the roof, with wide balconies surrounding the central space.
“This is where we house the main collection,” said Mary Willacott as they walked into the airy building, full of desks where the herbarium’s botanists worked and cabinets that housed the collections. “The new wing is arranged like this too. We also have a wonderful library of botanical books, some really quite old and rare, to help us with our work. There would usually be more people here but as it’s Saturday we’ve got the place to ourselves.”
Fran stepped forwards, running her hands along the edge of one of the desks. “Can you explain your work to me in a way that will help my readers understand exactly what it is that you do?” she asked.
“Well,” said Mary Willacott. “Why don’t you come upstairs and I’ll show you one of the most recent specimens I’ve worked on as an example?”
Katy’s mother led the way to a spiral staircase that joined the herbarium’s floors together and they all trooped up it, their shoes clanging on the metal steps as they went.
“At its most basic, a herbarium can be described as a library for the world’s plants,” Mary Willacott explained. “We have collections that were assembled over the years by gentlemen such as Mr William Hooker, who became the director of Kew Gardens in 1841, and the botanists Doctor Bromfield and Mr George Bentham. We also take in specimens sent to us from expeditions exploring the many regions of the globe, and we swap with other herbaria too, like the one at the Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh.”
They reached the second floor and Katy’s mother led them into one of the little rooms, where a desk stood with several large, flat wooden crates set atop it.
“The point of the herbarium,” Mary Willacott went on, “is to assemble as complete a collection of examples of the world’s plants as possible. Every time an expedition goes out, a member collects examples of plants found during the trip. When they return, they send those here to Kew so that we can preserve and store them properly.”
“Why is that important?” Fran asked. “Why do we need such a library?”
“Well,” said Katy’s mother. “Besides adding to humanity’s scientific knowledge about the Earth, it also means we have an amazing resource for research. We have seeds here from plants that were found on the other side of the globe that we can then try to cultivate here at Kew. Many of the garden’s most exotic plants have been grown in this way.”
“Have you ever gone out on an expedition yourself?” Fran asked.
Mary Willacott laughed quietly. “That’s not really an opportunity available to me.”
Fran frowned. “But there are women in the field, aren’t there? I’m sure I’ve come across some in my research. Amalie Dietrich, for example, whose specimens of Australian wood won prizes at the Paris International Exhibition in 1867?”
“That’s true,” Katy’s mother agreed. “Ms Dietrich’s work is exemplary – we have some of her specimens here at Kew, in fact. But she is still an exception. Women don’t usually form part of an official expedition. They’re more likely to be travelling with their husbands and helping where they can.”
“Right,” said Fran. She looked at Katy and made a comical face. Katy grinned. She could tell that Fran Brocklehurst wouldn’t want to spend her time waiting at home to be sent specimens to look after. She would want to be out there, collecting the specimens herself, like Amalie Dietrich. Katy didn’t blame her. She did love the herbarium but how wonderful it would be to actually go on an expedition!
“As a botanical taxonomist,” Mary Willacott went on, “it’s my job to make sure that the plants we receive are preserved and catalogued correctly. If they’re looked after in the right way, a specimen can survive for hundreds of years – and that means those seeds that I mentioned earlier will too. Imagine being able to take out a sample from an expedition conducted years ago, from a plant that is long since forgotten, and grow a new one! We’ve got some examples of plants here that go right back to the 1700s. Part of my role is also to examine each specimen to determine whether what we have been sent belongs to a species we already have here, or whether it is a plant previously unknown in the science of botany.”
She stopped in front of one of the cabinets and pulled it open, revealing a collection of large folders. Mary Willacott chose one and lifted it out, turning to place it flat on the desk. Inside was a sheet of paper with a large, dried plant with a mass of small, faded pink flowers pressed flat against it. Down one edge of the paper were several notes in very small, neat handwriting. Below the specimen was written a name, a place and a date.
“This is a specimen that—” Mary Willacott began but before she could say more, a booming voice roared angrily from below them.
“Where in the devil’s name is everybody?”
Chapter Five
Katy went to the balcony and looked over it, her mother and Fran close behind. Standing below them was a broad-shouldered man dressed in a black top hat and matching coat tails, clutching a heavy-looking walking stick. He had a bushy beard and eyebrows, cheeks flushed red with rage, and wore a scowl that was clear to see even from where the three women stood.
“Hello, sir,” said Mary Willacott, beginning to make her way back to the spiral staircase. “Can I help you?”
Katy watched as the visitor’s attention snapped to her mother. If anything, his countenance darkened further.
“I doubt it,” he said. “I hardly think the cleaning staff could help me.”
Katy saw her mother pause in her step for a moment.
“What are you two gawping at?” the rude stranger asked, looking up at Katy and Fran. “Get about your business. You’re not paid to stand idle.”
“Sir,” said Mary Willacott, reaching the bottom step and crossing the floor towards the man. “My name is Mary Willacott. I am a botanist here at the herbarium. The reason there is no one else here is that it is a Saturday, and the staff work neither on a Saturday nor on a Sunday. Now – is there something I can help you with?”
The visitor stared at her. “You,” he said, with utter disdain. “Are employed as a botanist? Here? At the Royal Botanic Gardens of Kew? I had no idea that standards had slipped so low. Well, it now seems my quest is all the more pressing. Things really must be rectified.”
“I beg your pardon?” said Mary Willacott.
“I am Sir Thomas Derby. You will have heard of me, of course,” he said. “I am currently overseeing construction of the new Natural History Museum. It is my intention to have this entire operation –” at this he lifted his cane and whisked it in a tight circle, indicating the herbarium as a whole – “moved into our modern laboratories and away from the grasp of amateurs.” He sniffed, glancing around. “Now that I have visited for myself and seen the desperate straits in which our nation’s proud heritage resides, I am even more convinced this is desirable – nay, necessary. Not working on a Saturday, indeed. Employing women in such delicate scientific work. Preposterous.”
Katy had frozen the second that the man had announced his name. She did indeed know the name of Sir Thomas Derby, from hearing it discussed over the dinner table at Rose Cottage. Derby was Katy’s father’s superior at the British Museum, and never missed an opportunity to make sure that Josiah Willacott knew how lowly his position as a mere assistant archaeologist was.
“Sir Thomas!” exclaimed Fran, her bright voice ringing out over the balcony as she hurried towards the staircase. “How fortuitous! I have been trying to contact you for some weeks!” The journalist ran lightly down the spiral steps to stand at Mary Willacott’s side.
Derby looked down his nose at Fran. “You have been trying to contact me? What could you and I possibly have to discuss?”
“I’m a journalist, Sir Thomas. I’m putting together a piece about women in the sciences – that’s why I’m here, to talk to Mrs Willacott. Her work in the herbarium is really quite exceptional. As someone instrumental in the arrangement of the new Natural History Museum, I wanted to hear your thoughts on the future of women in the sciences.”
Sir Thomas Derby gave a dismissive snort. “There is no place for women in the sciences. If they have a need for amusement, then botany is of course a suitable hobby for the female mind. But the idea that they should be employed –” here he shot Katy’s mother a disgusted look – “as scientists in any serious institution is … is simply absurd.”
Katy saw that Fran had opened her notebook and was diligently writing down everything Sir Thomas said.
“And why do you say that, Sir Thomas?” enquired Fran, pencil poised against her paper.
“Do you really have to ask?” Derby said, incredulous. “Why, surely even to you it is obvious. The female brain does not contain the capacity required for proper scientific reasoning, and they are forever distracted – as is only proper – by concerns to do with the home and children and whatnot. Now since there is no one here with whom I can converse seriously about the future of this institution…”
He touched the rim of his top hat in the tiniest possible show of respect, and then turned on his heel. The door to the herbarium swung shut behind him, leaving the three of them standing in silence.
“Do you think he recognized your name, Mama?” Katy asked after a moment. “I mean, you are the wife of one of his archaeologists…”
Mary Willacott gave a brief laugh. “Oh, I doubt that very much.”
“That opinion of his,” Fran Brocklehurst said. “Is that something you’ve experienced a lot, Mrs Willacott?”
Katy made her way down to join them as her mother sighed and said, “From some quarters, yes.”
“One would have thought your work would speak for itself,” the journalist observed.
“Yes,” Mary Willacott agreed. “One would.”
“Does it worry you, what Sir Thomas just said?” Fran asked as Katy joined them. “About wanting to move the herbarium into the Natural History Museum when it opens?”
“It worries me very much indeed.” Katy’s mother slipped her arm around Katy’s shoulders.
Fran made another note and then looked up with a smile. “Well. He’s gone for now, so I suggest we continue with our tour. I for one have no intention of letting Sir Thomas Derby take up another minute of my time. Katy – why don’t you show me what you’ve been working on?”
“That’s a good idea,” said Mary Willacott, with a genuine smile. “Katy has a knack for accurate taxonomy and how to preserve a plant specimen for the collection. Kew herbarium will be lucky to have her when she finishes school.”
Katy tried to smile and followed her mother and Fran back towards the staircase. She couldn’t forget the look of disgust on Sir Thomas Derby’s face, though, or how adamant he was that women like them did not belong in this building at all.
Chapter Six
Later, once they had shown Fran all there was to see and the horrible encounter with Derby was almost forgotten, the journalist looked at her watch and declared that she must go.
“It’s been wonderful meeting you both but I’ve got a train to catch,” she said as she shoved her notepad and pencil back into her satchel. “Thank you, Mrs Willacott, really – you’ve given me so much material for my article.”
“You’re very welcome,” said Katy’s mother. “It’s been a pleasant day, seeing the herbarium through someone else’s eyes. Or at least,” she added darkly. “It’s been mostly pleasant.”
Fran reached out and patted Mary Willacott’s arm. “Don’t worry about Sir Thomas. He’s just an old windbag, and his words – they’re nothing more than wasted hot air.”
Katy saw her mother’s slight smile and knew what she’d be thinking. That Fran was right about the first bit but as for the second – well. The two of them already knew exactly how much Sir Thomas Derby could hold back their family. He’d been keeping Katy’s father in the museum’s basement instead of letting him go out in the field for years.
“Katy,” Fran said. “Do you fancy walking me back to the train station? I don’t want to get lost.”
Katy was surprised. It seemed unlikely to her that Fran Brocklehurst would get lost anywhere. She looked at her mother, who nodded.
“Of course, run along with Fran,” said Mary Willacott. “I’m going to check that everything is shipshape here and go back to help Peg with lunch.”
Katy and Fran left the herbarium and set off in the direction of the village. They’d only gone a few steps when Fran turned to Katy with a wicked grin.
“Well, come on, then,” she said. “If you don’t want to be a botanist, tell me what it is you do want to do.”
Katy looked up at her with surprise. “How do you know I don’t want to be a botanist?”
“I’m good at reading people. You didn’t argue with your mother when she talked about it but you didn’t agree with her, either. I bet that happens every time she brings it up, doesn’t it?”
Katy sighed. “It’s not that I don’t want to be a botanist. I like plants. They’re fascinating. It’s just … that’s what everyone is assuming I am going to be, just because it’s what my mother does and because I am here, already living at Kew. And,” she added, voicing something her father had said many times, “because it’s an appropriate science for a woman.”
“What does really interest you, then?” Fran asked.
“I don’t know.” Katy waved vaguely at the world around them. “Everything. The stars, for example.”
“The stars?”
“Yes,” said Katy. “Have you ever gone to the British Museum and looked at their meteorites? They’re beautiful and strange and they’re from somewhere so far away that we can’t even imagine the distance. What is it like there? Is there another Earth out there somewhere? If there is, how would we get there?”
“And this is what you really want to do? You want to study the cosmos?”
“Yes … no … it’s not all I want to do.” Katy tried to find a way to explain. “That was just an example. Fossils, I find those fascinating too. Animals, sea creatures, rocks. Sailing! I want to sail the seas, like my grandfather Ned. He’s been teaching me how to handle a yacht. I suppose what I really want to be is … an adventuring naturalist, like Charles Darwin.”
Fran laughed. “I’m not sure that’s quite what he calls himself.”
“Well, it’s what I’d call myself,” Katy said firmly. “I’d go everywhere and see everything for myself, instead of just reading about other people doing it.”
The journalist grinned. “Excellent. Well, let’s keep in touch. I’d love to be friends with an adventuring naturalist. Your mother has my address.”
“Oh, I won’t get to do any of that,” Katy said gloomily. “I’ll be just like my mother, spending all my time in the herbarium, preparing the dried specimens that other people have travelled all over the world to find.”
