Lord Byron's Novel

by John Crowley

  unconfined: ‘On with the dance! Let joy be unconfined’—Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage

  Adam’s children: The same theme is adumbrated at length in Ld. B.’s drama Cain, wherein Cain’s beloved wife is also his sister. The sister in the present tale is more correctly a half-sister, as was Ld. B.’s only sibling, Mrs Augusta Leigh. He chose to give to the sister-wife in Cain the name Adah. Augusta Adah Ada Augusta ada adust

  his starved and desiccated heart: ‘The withered heart that would not break’—Lara

  a Pyre: It is astonishing to me that, though by all evidences I am able to assemble these pages were written before Lord Byron’s residence in Pisa and Leghorn, and therefore before the death by drowning of Shelley, yet here is the pyre set up by the water, the beloved figure consumed, &c., all so much as it would be that a thrill as of the uncanny passed through me to read it. Here is what Ld. B. wrote to Mr Moore of that day in Lerici when the bodies of Shelley and his friend Williams were burned: ‘You can have no idea what an extraordinary effect such a funeral pile has, on a desolate shore, with mountains in the back-ground and the sea before, and the singular appearance the salt and frankincense gave to the flame.’ And yet he did have an idea beforehand, and an exact one. It is said that Shelley was glimpsed walking in the woods near his house in Leghorn, but when his friends hailed him, he would not turn, and vanished away; and on that day, in fact, he was upon the sea, and drowned. What then is Time? Is its course but one way? Or is it like a swift stream, that rolls some things along faster & some slower, leaves, sticks and stones, which may change places, and pass each other by, collide, and combine, even as all are borne along? I sometimes think that we lead many lives between birth and dying, and only one, or perhaps two, are ever known to us consciously; the others pass in parallel, invisible, or they run backward while the one we busy ourselves with runs forward. There is no expressing this in words; only in dreams or in the power of certain stimulants is it possible to experience them—that state where two things can, after all, occupy the same space.

  • THIRTEEN •

  Wherein a Tale is told, yet not ended

  WHAT NAME I was given by my mother and father, or what name had been chosen for me, I know not,’ Ali’s interlocutor began. ‘My father bestowed none upon me; I was not christened. I had come before my time from my mother’s womb, and ill-finished, an “unlicked bear cub that carries no impression like the dam”. My father believed—indeed he hoped—that I should not live to see the Sun set on my first day. He considered it best that I not be fed, and be let to pass quickly—as the more merciful way—and he supposed that it would be done as he decreed. My mother, however, hid me away, with the connivance of her servants, and though I did not flourish, I did not die. Nameless—unformed—rejected—given suck in secret—a pale worm not quite of this world: so was my coming hither.

  ‘When some week or two had passed, the Lord my father discovered the subterfuge, and, judging me still unfit for Life, in a rage took me from my mother’s Breast, consigned me to a Nurse chosen from the household, and sent me with her to a distant cot amid people from whom she had sprung. Privily upon her going away he gave her a purse of Money, and told her he would be glad of news that I had succumbed—which he was certain I should do—by one means or another.’

  ‘I cannot conceive how you came to know this tale,’ said Ali.

  ‘I did not, till I was grown,’ said the other, ‘for that good woman, who took my father’s silver, was not able to do what she had been paid to do. Instead she found among her people a couple whose new-born had but a week before died of a fever, and who agreed, for the same fee, to foster me—whereupon she sent word to my father the news that he desired to hear.

  ‘I grew, then, among simple cotters, who knew only that I had come from the Laird’s house—yet not who I was. I was called by the only name I have ever borne, which is Ængus—a wanderer’s name, in Scots legend a lad born to a King and fostered in another’s house—tho’ I learned not if those who bestowed the name upon me recked that. There were reasons enough why a bairn should thus be outcast. I grew, I say—never straight nor very strong—and though the people who raised me as their own were kind, I thought of little but how I might escape the land of my birth, where I was feared as a changeling, and mocked as a cripple—or worse than that—for among those people Religion was not the mild affair of Glasgow and Moral Sentiment, but of the old fierce prophets of the moss-hags. A deformity of Body, as they perceived it, showed clearly the disfavour of God—or, just as likely, the favour of the Devil, for they were not done burning witches in that country. There was talk that I was possess’d of the Evil Eye, and some spoke of making an incision in my forehead, in the form of a Cross, to prevent the effects—and, if the eye is the window of the Soul, as not only poets aver, then well might mine have projected an evil from within, that ’twere best good folk avoid! My kind fosterers, seeing clearly enough that neither in my person nor in my mind was I destined to be a prop to them in their age, at length permitted me to depart; and when I had reached the age of sixteen, and resolved upon a career at Sea, they put into my hands the very purse of silver that had come with me in my basket from my father.’

  ‘Kind people indeed!’

  ‘It was but mine own,’ said Ængus with a shrug, ‘with much more too, that I was likely—indeed, as it seemed, certain—never to enjoy. On the day I struck out for the coast and the harbour, that nurse who had at first taken me from my father’s house stopt me along the road, and there gave me—along with her blessing—the account of my coming-to-be which I have told you. Then I knew two things—that I was the heir of the Sanes, and of my mother’s lands, including that upon which I stood; and that my father had desired, and conspired in, my death. I vowed that however far I went, I would return to have vengeance upon him, and to see the ruin of his house.’

  ‘Which was your own.’

  ‘What was mine was nothing. What was not taken from me I threw away and look’d not back. I had—I have—nothing but the power to act as I will—even to act against myself.’

  ‘So it was said of him,’ said Ali. ‘So I saw it in him, myself.’

  ‘I am his son.’

  ‘And so am I.’

  Ængus looked down upon Ali then, and a smile—a terrible smile, a sneer of triumph—cross’d his features. ‘Then I will hold the mirror up to thee, my brother,’ said he, ‘and do thou look—look well!—and tell me what thou seest.’

  ‘Nay,’ said Ali, nothing abashed, and returning that gaze. ‘If thou wert nothing, so was I: what I am, I have made. It may be the same with thee. Continue with your tale. Did you go to sea?’

  ‘I did,’ said Ængus. ‘When a man has an object in view such as I then had—when his every thought is of an act he will perform, and measures he will take—it may so concentrate his mind as to make his daily labour, howsoever tedious or arduous, of no consequence—and he may make no objection to it—strangely, it may make him singularly attentive to such Tasks as fall to him, for each has its Reason, and its end in view, no matter how far off. Thus may an avenger resemble a Saint, in the execution of his daily duty, his thoughts fixed upon a future state. In this mood I became a Sailor, despite the disabilities under which I laboured—I did twice the work another man would do, and did it more conscientiously. I learned, quickly enough, the heedless courage (if so it is to be named) which a man needs below decks, not to be ground underfoot by stronger and better-friended men—you must make them know you will not stop at cutting their throats, if they abuse you, though it mean your own execution.

  ‘Thus it was that upon the Seas I became educated—not only in the nautical trades but in Commerce as well. I devoted myself to learning the most lucrative branches of it, which are Smuggling, and the Slave-trade—the two not then having become one. I rose to be Master of my own ship, and turned to the buying and selling of men, upon which I profited much, and rarely disappointed my Investors—tho’ once an intire cargo was lost to a f
ever, and had to be thrown overboard, to my great cost. When the Slave-trade was banned, the traffic in them became more operose, subject to the whims not only of Chance, but of Law, and soon I lost my taste for it. With my fortune, I bought sugar lands in the West Indies, and became a Planter, employing many slaves in the business—the abolition of commerce in them having no impact upon the owning of them, nor the working of them to the limits of their appalling endurance, nor even their Increase, tho’ by natural means, rather than buying and selling. I drove mine, indeed. More than one I saw put to death—their lives, as their Liberty, being entirely in my hands, no magistrate needed to be summoned. Had I not been willing to take such measures as needed, I should not have lived long among them, but would have been murdered in my bed—or revolted against by my own Overseers, and stript of my property—for that sort took every advantage of their employers’ weakness, as of the weaknesses of the folk they oversaw. I drove my slaves—I flogged them—I worked them. Yet I laboured with them too, and sweat beside them, often as near-naked as they in the heat of those regions. After a year and more I had a fine house, and they mean cabins; I had Pistols in my belt, and they welts upon their backs. After three years, despite my youth, I was a man of wealth—and yet no sooner had I accumulated Money to a degree I deemed sufficient, than I was done with Sweetness—whose true bitterness the tea-drinkers of England do not think upon, and perhaps cannot conceive. At that time, observing that the uprisings in Santo Domingo had—at least for a brilliant moment—succeeded, and having grown conscious of their own base servitude, and desperate enough of Life to throw it off, the blacks of the Islands I inhabited had determined upon revolt. There were leaders among them as astute as Marlborough, as ruthless as Caligula—and with a more noble aim, Liberty, than either. I called to me those of my own whom I knew to be allied with the Rebels, and offered them Manumission, which they rightly scorn’d. I thereupon congratulated them, and that night, with a Treasure in specie and a small crew of those who insisted against all good sense on remaining loyal to my person, I sailed away. I left behind my house, an amount of gold in Spanish dollars, the keys to my strong-room—wherein was kept not only a supply of arms but several nine-pound Japan tins of Powder,—and a list of the names of those whom they would do well to make the first targets of their insurrection.’

  ‘You fomented revolution against your own neighbours?’ Ali exclaimed. ‘When you knew what the result would be?’

  ‘What did I know?’ said Ængus. ‘I knew that the Judges, Officers, overseers, and planters whom their Revolution intended to shoot were quite deserving of it, myself first among them. Whether the revolted Negroes themselves, who (as I hear) now sit in the seats of Power, and decorate their uniforms in Gold, and have their portraits painted, have already earned a hanging, or are yet to do—that I cannot tell. ’Tis no matter; I shall not return thither. I sailed into the rising sun, toward my Homeland, now with the means to effect my vengeance, which was all that I had sought in my business dealings. I know not how a heart may become so singular, as though a coal were to keep its fire forever, and neither consume itself nor grow cold—yet so mine then seemed to me—it does not now. I disposed of my ship upon the Irish coast, and the crew I gave their freedom, with papers attesting, signed and sealed, with the understanding that they would return to whichever land they now considered Home, and speak not a word of me, or my comings and goings—to which they willingly consented. Now without hindrance I went to and fro upon the land, and walked up and down in it—a purse-ful of gold being a fine Cloak of Invisibility, if used as such—and learned much about the fortunes of my House, and its shameful decline in the keeping of my Father, and the fate of my Mother—dead, dead before my hand could touch hers, before I could ask her blessing, or offer my forgiveness! I learned, moreover, of you, my Brother, and of your usurpation.’

  Ali at this might have bridled, and challenged the stoop’d and bitter figure who related the tale—but somehow upon the man’s features he saw that which stilled him—a kind of carelessness of heavy usages that made them seem light, or unmeant—yet still able to sting. Usurpation! Would he had never heard the tongue in which the word existed, nor seen the lands he had usurped! ‘How came you,’ he asked, ‘to learn of these things—of me—without raising questions concerning yourself?’

  ‘I made myself known to one of the household,’ said Ængus. ‘Rashly, it may be, yet (for a reason I know not), I now believed my plan could not fail, that the Stars had sealed it, or that the Angels—no, not they!—had written it in the Book of what’s to be, and it could not now be erased. ’Twas an old serving-man, who had waited upon my Grandfather, and for aught I know upon his father too—a hoary-headed ancient—a heart of oak—’

  ‘Old Jock!’ breathed Ali. ‘He knew of you?’

  ‘By certain signs he begged to see, he had proof of who I was,’ said Ængus, ‘as Ulysses’ nurse knew him. I asked for his silence, which he readily gave, and was my spy within the house in that week when I laid my plans. Indeed, he aided them—for he supposed I had returned to claim but my rightful place there in the House—to supplant, that is, yourself—the which I permitted him to believe. I see in your face that this shocks you—for by his own words he professed to love you—I know he did—yet such men are bound most by their ancient loyalty—their hearts, and their backs, will break before those chains are broken. Your sudden return to the Abbey was an inconvenience, as it fell just upon the time when I had determined the deed might best be done. Still I continued as I had planned. Old Jock it was, who on that night, set out astride an old galloway after Lord Sane in his carriage; and finding him next day becalmed, as it were, at an Inn of ill-repute upon the South-ward road, told him that a Stranger had appeared at the Abbey, who desired some private conversation with him—the subject being his legitimate son, and a Fortune—which conversation the said stranger would not hold in any public place, nor under the Lord’s roof. I believe that if any but that good old man had told Lord Sane of these things, he would not have agreed to come that night to the old watchtower. But so it fell out, and so he came. And there within was I.’

  ‘And there you intended to murder him?’ Ali here exclaimed. ‘Was such from the outset your intention? Did you consider yourself able? Did you not tremble, at the enormity—nor even at the difficulty? He was one not easily to be conquered.’

  ‘I had no fear of that. My own strength—which is greater than those who oppose me often suspect—would not, I thought, be sufficient to the accomplishing of all my purpose. But I had brought with me, from those Islands where I had formerly reigned, a power that the land of my birth reck’d not of. For, among those people suborned from their native Forests, and brought in chains to the New World to labour in unaccustom’d servitude, there is yet preserved an ancient Science of life & death, a practique known only to the wisest among them (who may seem the lowliest) and passed on by them to their epigones, in whispers, and under close vows of secrecy, not to be broken on pain of death—or worse. In short, there is a means known to these priests, or doctors, by which one apparently dead—to all our senses cold, without breath or motion—may be preserved from Corruption, so that—though he be no longer conscious, of himself or the world—he may go on serving the Master who so animated him—or rather his flesh. Such a one, though he seem alive, is not—he feels nothing, knows nothing. Yet he responds to commands unquestioningly—feels no pain, no fear—is tireless, ceaseless, insensate, horribly strong—and unable to be slain, for he is dead already!’

  ‘Can this be so?’ Ali breathed in horror.

  ‘Can it be? It is said that the Army that overthrew the soldiers of Buonaparte on Santo Domingo were composed of such. Of the truth of that I know nothing—but you yourself know it to be possible—for it was a being of this kind that, at my command, took you from your prison cell, and carried you to the ship of the Irish brothers, whereby you made your escape.’

  ‘My God!’ said Ali. ‘Dreadful! And was it he also—he�
�who in the watchtower—’

  ‘I desired,’ said Ængus, ‘to have some conversation with the Lord; so much was the truth. I wished in the first place to enlighten him—what he had been, and done, and what I—and how it stood between us now—his life in the balance, and not mine. This was what I had so long meditated upon—the dawning of knowledge in him—knowledge of his Evil, that it would not go unpunished—of his Design, that it had not succeeded—that one at least of his many victims had not been crushed, and that Justice would be done upon him.’

  Here Ængus paused a moment in his tale, and look’d out to sea; he seemed to smile, as he remembered—a mocking smile, though it could be only himself that he mocked. ‘You see,’ said he, ‘this is the flaw in the practise of revenge—which is little noticed by mankind, so few obtaining their revenge, among all those who dream of it—that the soul of our enemy is better defended than his life, and even our sure and certain power to take the latter, will not always prise open the former. So it was with him. He denied all at first—towered in Rage that I should insult him thus—laughed, then, at my Insolence, and my supposed lies, which he said no-one would believe. He accused me of designs upon his own fortune, of having concocted a scheme such as he might himself have conceived, and he called it a bad one, with no chance of success. When he became convinced that indeed I meant to call him to account, and would not be deflected—that I should stand in the offices of Judge, Jury, and Executioner—that the Pistols I had in my hands were primed and had their object in view—still no light of remorse lit his features—no more than were he a man-eating Tyger whom I had trapped, and must destroy—only a cunning, to see what chance he had still to escape. Thus he suddenly changed—he admitted the wrongs he had done to me—and to his Wife; express’d his gladness that I had survived; promised me a seat by his right hand, all by-gones to be by-gones, he and I to join together in the restoration of the House—yourself to be cast out.’