Bifrons, Kent
June 1828

I am sitting in one of my preferred hiding places – the little box room next to the maids’ bedrooms, high up on the very top floor of Bifrons. Slant-ceilinged and filled to capacity with boxes of papers, trunks, and odds-and-ends, it is an excellent spot for Gobblebook, but also for thinking, uninterrupted.

It is nine months since we returned from our continental travels, and in many ways, I feel extraordinarily changed. I am different. Older (twelve and a half, which seems almost impossibly grown-up) and taller (a relief, for the doctor did not think, before we left, that I was growing quite as well as I might) and wiser. I am wiser in many ways. I can speak better in French; I have read thirty-seven books (Miss Stamp and I kept a faithful record); I can now complete Euclidian problems with speed and accuracy. Sometimes the beauty of geometry permeates my dreams: a galaxy of vertices and planes, glinting like palaces of ice.

And I have acquired not only the wisdom of books, but also of people. I know that, for all her protestations about the educational purposes of our tour, Mamma was, in many ways, giving space and time to her feelings for my dead father. It really was a pilgrimage of sorts. Yes: we visited Hofwyl, not once but twice, and I’ve no doubt that Mamma truly needed to see it. But our stay in Geneva, where we saw the house in which he had lived, was no less important to her. I’m sure of that.

There was more to come. After a time in Turin, on the Po River, where you could see the Alps in all their magnificence no matter where in the city you were, we went to Genoa. Here, Mamma rented a palazzo. It was simply the most exquisite place I had ever seen. Huge, square, grey – a veritable castle – it overlooked the bustling port town from a high-up resting place amongst the hills.

‘I am never happier than when I can see the sea,’ I said to Miss Stamp, as I waltzed from room to room.

One afternoon, a visitor appeared: a plump man of middle age with a kindly face and luxuriant moustaches. It transpired that Signor Isola had been engaged to teach me music and drawing.

‘Do you like music, Miss Byron?’ he asked me.

‘I love to sing, though perhaps I could be better at it,’ I told him. ‘While here on the Continent I have heard, on many occasions, the most beautiful organ music in churches.’

‘What made you like it so much?’

Thinking carefully, I replied: ‘Because of the patterns. The notes in each register complement each other. It seems a simple thing, but actually it must be very complicated. It must take a composer of great genius to create such music.’

Mamma said to Signor Isola: ‘Ada’s father wanted her to be musical. It was his wish.’

‘Lord Byron himself had a fine singing voice,’ said Signor Isola, nodding wisely.

‘Oh!’ I said. ‘You... you knew my father?’

‘Why, yes. He lived here, in Genoa, for a time – five years ago, it must be – before he went to Greece.’

And so, once again, it seemed that we had come to a place that my father had intimately known. Signor Isola came every day, ostensibly to teach me, but I found that he stayed long after the lesson was over, talking to Mamma about my father. I would have liked to have been part of their conversations, but was not invited. Leaning over the banisters of the piano nobile, I would do my best to overhear what they were saying.

‘He stayed in the Casa Saluzzo, if memory serves me well,’ Signor Isola was saying one evening. ‘A lovely place, with the most wonderful views. Ah, but I don’t know if he was happy here in Genoa. Many’s the time that I would see him, head lowered, at the water’s edge, and frowning as though all the cares of the world were visited upon him...’

Such tantalising snippets as this one would occasionally reach me. I heard only one other snippet, and it was Mamma this time who was speaking, but she was not speaking in English. I fretted over it all night, for it seemed to me important. I wanted to know.

At my singing lesson the following day, I plucked up the courage to ask Signor Isola himself.

‘Tell me, please, some of things that you have been speaking about with Mamma,’ I said. ‘They concern my father, and so they also concern me.’

Signor Isola took out a large, splendidly-embroidered silk handkerchief and wiped his brow, with exaggerated slowness, before replying: ‘Your mother wishes to know my impressions of Lord Byron, and I have been telling her what I remember.’

‘And what did she say to you last night?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘It wasn’t in Genoese,’ I said. ‘I thought it might have been Latin. A phrase of some kind. A quotation?’

‘Ah, yes. De mortuis nihil nisi bonum. “Speak nothing but good of the dead”,’ said Signor Isola.

‘I don’t understand.’

He shrugged. ‘Your mother, she is a proud woman. She will not tarnish the name of a great poet with public slander; and even in private, to you, his child, she will say little.’

‘But... but what is there to say?’

‘Lord Byron was, many say, a genius. Those people do not often exercise the same moral restraint that others, less blessed with exceptional talent, are wont to do.’

‘What does that mean, if you please?’

‘Ah, Miss Byron, it is really not for me to say. He was a man about whom there was often... What is the word?’ He made a searching motion with his hand, as though rummaging through some drawer in his mind. ‘Gossip,’ he said at last. ‘Oh, yes, there were plenty of stories! Next time, perhaps, I could tell you a little more... But then again, you are only a child. Let us practise now a rising arpeggio, if you please, commencing on Middle C.’

That was the last time that I saw Signor Isola. But for the rest of our tour, the tantalising questions raised by our stay in Genoa remained with me, and now that we are returned to England, they remain with me still. I must – I must know what happened! Why did my mother and father separate when they did? Did they argue? Was there a misunderstanding of some kind? A tragedy?

Was it something to do with me?

It is, I decide, not unlike a Euclidian puzzle. Human Geometry. I imagine now my parents as shapes – my obstinately rational mother I cast as a square; my father, less symmetrical, a triangle. The angles of the triangle add up to 180 degrees; the angles of the square to 360. The floor of the box room is dusty enough to allow me to draw the shapes with a finger. Inscribed within a circle, it is possible for their respective points to meet in only two or three places. In short, they do not match. There are sharp, uncovered edges; differences in behaviour.

I wonder, did my parents love each other at all?

‘I know she loved him,’ I say aloud, staring hard at my diagram as though it contains the answer. ‘I know she did. Why else did we travel to all those places that he had visited? But why does she never talk about him – or rather, when she does, it seems that there is so much that she cannot, or is unwilling to, say? And... did he love her? If he didn’t, why... Why am I here?’

The problem seems worryingly insoluble. My grandparents, who might have been able to shed some light on my questions, are dead; Miss Stamp did not know my father, nor my mother until she was engaged as my governess. I resolve to talk to some of my mother’s friends at the next suitable juncture – although I am doubtful that they will give me any meaningful information.

The window, I notice, is as grimy as the floor. Wiping away a thick film of cobwebs and dirt with my skirt – Nanny Briggs won’t be pleased about it, but never mind – I peer through the film glass and down to the gravelled pathway at the back of Bifrons. Sudden movement startles me – a blur of silky fur, shimmering out from beneath a bush – before I realise that it’s only Puff. She is circling something on the edge of the flowerbed, prowling like a tigress, occasionally darting forth to take little vindictive nips at what looks, at first glance, like a heap of funeral garments.

Taking care to first brush away my Human Geometry from the floorboards, I hurry down to investigate.

The heap of funeral clothes turns out to be a poor dead crow. Puff is dancing elatedly about, looking for all the world as though she killed it herself, which she may well have done.

‘Come away,’ I tell her, kneeling down. ‘Naughty Puff! Then again, I suppose you are only following your instincts.’

The bird is only recently dead, I think. I try to dissuade Puff from eating it; she has of late become incredibly fond of feasting on the corpses of birds. I feel sorry for the crow, and also curious. I would like to examine it. After a moment’s thought, I scramble over to the greenhouse, locate a pair of gardening gloves and return, emboldened, to scrutinise the bird. Tenderly, I take one wing and stretch it out so that I can see it well. I must make a sketch of it, I think; and when the flesh has decomposed, I will be able to study the skeleton properly, and make a sketch of that as well.

I feel it then, that web-like funnel-feeling: the world expanding and contracting around my ears, the daze swallowing me whole for a short while... undoubtedly, an idea. I sit for a moment longer, the wing resting between gloved fingers, and then dash pell-mell into the library, and this is where Miss Stamp finds me a couple of hours later, surrounded by notebooks and loose sheets of paper.

‘My goodness, Ada! What are you doing?’

‘Oh, Miss Stamp,’ I say. ‘It’s absurd – why has nobody thought of this before? Man should be able to fly! I feel intoxicated with the thought of it. Look!’

She leans over the pages, trying to decipher my writing, which always descends into lamentable squiggles when I am excited. ‘This,’ I explain, ‘is a design for a pair of fully-functioning wings, for a man – or woman, of course – to put on and fly with. I shall try to make them myself to see what can be achieved.’

‘As long as you take greater care than Icarus did,’ ventures Miss Stamp, with a smile.

‘I will write a book to go with my inventions,’ I tell her, ‘called Flyology. With illustrations.’

‘Oh, Ada,’ says Miss Stamp. ‘I am glad that you have not entirely abandoned your dream of being a writer.’

She smiles broadly, and I smile back, feeling – for some reason – relieved. ‘I never wanted to abandon that dream,’ I say slowly. ‘But I do worry that Mamma will say that Flyology is too fanciful. I shall make sure my designs are sound; then, perhaps, she will approve of them.’

‘That seems an excellent plan,’ says Miss Stamp.

‘I can’t help my imagination, sometimes,’ I say, thinking about it. ‘It just wants to do things, and I can’t stop it, you know.’

‘Ada,’ says Miss Stamp, ‘if I had your imagination, I would be very proud indeed.’

It is perhaps one of the nicest things that anyone has ever said to me, and I make up my mind to remember it always. For perhaps half an hour, my governess and I discuss my newly-christened Flyology. Miss Stamp suggests that we consider Da Vinci’s sketches for inspiration, but I point out to her that he did not actually succeed in designing fully-functioning wings, as I mean to do. We talk also of the Montgolfier brothers, who were, we think, the first to come up with the concept of human flight, by means of hydrogen-fuelled balloons. Miss Stamp raises the question of safety, and we talk about this for quite some time.

‘All good inventions must involve some risk,’ I say. ‘Just look at Mr Harris, the balloonist. He invented a special valve to allow gas from the balloon to be discharged slowly. A most important discovery.’

‘He died while flying his balloon, did he not?’ says Miss Stamp.

‘Yes, he did,’ I say. ‘But he died for the cause of scientific discovery. A most noble reason.’

‘Would you be prepared to die for your own inventions?’ asks my governess.

Thinking about the matter in all seriousness, I am not sure how to answer. No one, surely, can consider their own death lightly. But I think of my father, and also of my mother: each, in their own way, a person of remarkably strong convictions. My father believed absolutely in his work. (I am sure of this.) My mother believes absolutely in her duty to do good. I, Ada, must believe equally absolutely in my own causes.

I say: ‘If my invention – whether it is a flying machine or something else entirely – proves to be of indisputable use to society, then, yes, I think I would be prepared to die for it.’

‘That is a brave intention indeed,’ says Miss Stamp. ‘As long as there is to be no dying while I am here.’ She goes on: ‘Oh, Ada, I shall miss you.’

The words arrest my pencil mid-motion, and it slips from my fingers, landing with an apologetic clatter on the floor.

‘Miss me? But... where are you going?’

‘I am going to be married. I have just spoken to Lady Noel Byron. I shall leave before Christmas.’

‘You will come back,’ I say, wanting it to sound like a question. Instead, it has the querulous, tremulous tone of a vain command.