George removed his hand from Mary’s forehead and tried to signal the innkeeper, who was still struggling to corral the dogs. George failed, frowned, and lowered his hand.
“I’m cheered to know you’re familiar with the works of Newton,” Bysshe said.
“I wouldn’t say familiar,” said George. He was still trying to signal the innkeeper. “I haven’t read his books. But I know he wants me not to eat meat, and that’s all I need to know.”
Bysshe folded his big hands on the table. “Oh, there’s much more than that. Abstaining from meat implies an entire new moral order, in which mankind is placed on an equal level with the animals.”
“George in particular should appreciate that,” said Harry Smith, and made a face at the monkey.
“I think I prefer being ranked above the animals,” George said.
“And above most people, too.” He looked up at Bysshe. “Shall we avoid talk of food before we eat? My stomach’s rumbling louder than a battery of Napoleon’s daughters.” He looked down at the monkey and assumed a high-pitched Scots dowager’s voice.
“An’ sae is Jerome Bonaparte’s, annit nae, Jerome?”
George finally succeeded in attracting the innkeeper’s attention and the company ordered food and wine. Bread, cheese, and pickles were brought to tide them over in the meantime. Jerome Bonaparte was permitted off his master’s lap to roam free along the table and eat what he wished.
George watched as Bysshe carved a piece of cheese for himself. “In addition to Newton, you would also be a follower of William Godwin?”
Bysshe gave Mary a glance, then nodded. “Ay. Godwin also.”
“I thought I recognized that ‘philosophical anarchism’ of yours. Godwin was the rage when I was at Harrow. But not so much thought of now, eh? Excepting of course his lovely namesake.”
Turning his gaze to Mary.
Mary gave him a cold look. “Truth is ever in fashion, my lord,” she said.
“Did you say ever or never!” Playfully. Mary said nothing, and George gave a shrug. “Truthful Master Godwin, then. And who else?”
“Ovid,” Mary said. The officers looked a little serious at this. She smiled. “Come now— he’s not as scandalous as he’s been made out. Merely playful.”
This did not reassure her audience. Bysshe offered Mary a private smile. “We’ve also been reading Mary Wollstonecraft.”
“Ah!” George cried. “Heaven save us from intellectual women!”
“Mary Wollstonecraft,” said Somerset thoughtfully. “She was a harlot in France, was she not?”
“I prefer to think of my mother,” said Mary carefully, “as a political thinker and authoress.”
There was sudden silence as Somerset turned white with mortification. Then George threw back his head and laughed.
“Sunburn me!” he said. “That answers as you deserve!”
Somerset visibly made an effort to collect his wits. “I am most sorry, Miss— ” he began.
George laughed again. “By heaven, we’ll watch our words hereafter!”
Claire tittered. “I was in suspense, wondering if there would be a mishap. And there was, there was!”
George turned to Mary and managed to compose his face into an attitude of solemnity, though the amusement that danced in his eyes denied it.
“I sincerely apologize on behalf of us all, Miss Godwin. We are soldiers and are accustomed to speaking rough among ourselves, and have been abroad and are doubtless ignorant of the true worth of any individual— ” He searched his mind for a moment, trying to work out a graceful way to conclude. “— outside of our own little circle,” he finished.
“Well said,” said Mary, “and accepted.” She had chosen more interesting ground on which to make her stand.
“Oh yes!” said Claire. “Well said indeed!”
“My mother is not much understood by the public,” Mary continued. “But intellectual women, it would seem, are not much understood by you.”
George leaned away from Mary and scanned her with cold eyes.
“On the contrary,” he said. “I am married to an intellectual woman.”
“And she, I imagine... ” Mary let the pause hang in the air for a moment, like a rapier before it strikes home. “... resides in England?”
George scowled. “She does.”
“I’m sure she has her books to keep her company.”
“And Francis Bacon,” George said, his voice sour. “Annabella is an authority on Francis Bacon. And she is welcome to reform him, if she likes.”
Mary smiled at him. “Who keeps you company, my lord?”
There was a stir among his friends. He gave her that insolent, under-eyed look again.
“I am not often lonely,” he said.
“Tonight you will rest with the ghost of Napoleon,” she said. “Which of you has better claim to that bed?”
George gave a cold little laugh. “I believe that was decided at Waterloo.”
“The Duke’s victory, or so I’ve heard.”
George’s friends were giving each other alarmed looks. Mary decided she had drawn enough Byron blood. She took a piece of cheese.
“Tell us about Waterloo!” Claire insisted. “Is it far from here?”
“The field is a mile or so north,” said Somerset. He seemed relieved to turn to the subject of battles. “I had thought perhaps you were English tourists come to visit the site.”
“Our arrival is coincidence,” Bysshe said. He was looking at Mary narrow-eyed, as if he was trying to work something out. “I’m somewhat embarrassed for funds, and I’m in hope of finding a letter at Brussels from my— ” He began to say “wife,” but changed the word to “family.”
“We’re on our way to Vienna,” Smith said.
“The long way ’round,” said Somerset. “It’s grown unsafe in Paris— too many old Bonapartists lurking with guns and bombs, and of course George is the laddie they hate most. So we’re off to join the Duke as diplomats, but we plan to meet with his highness of Orange along the way. In Brussels, in two days’ time.”
“Good old Slender Billy!” said Smith. “I haven’t seen him since the battle.”
“The battle!” said Claire. “You said you would tell us!”
George gave her an irritated look. “Please, Miss Clairmont, I beg you. No battles before dinner.” His stomach rumbled audibly.
“Bysshe,” said Mary, “didn’t you say the cook had told you a ghost story?”
“A good one, too,” said Bysshe. “It happened in the house across the road, the one with the tile roof. A pair of old witches used to live there. Sisters.” He looked up at George. “We may have ghosts before dinner, may we not?”
“For all of me, you may.”
“They dealt in charms and curses and so on, and made a living supplying the, ah, the supernatural needs of the district. It so happened that two different men had fallen in love with the same girl, and each man applied to one of the weird sisters for a love charm— each to a different sister, you see. One of them used his spell first and won the heart of the maiden, and this drove the other suitor into a rage. So he went to the witch who had sold him his charm, and demanded she change the young lady’s mind. When the witch insisted it was impossible, he drew his pistol and shot her dead.”
“How very un-Belgian of him,” drawled Smith.
Bysshe continued unperturbed. “So quick as a wink,” he said, “the dead witch’s sister seized a heavy kitchen cleaver and cut off the young man’s head with a single stroke. The head fell to the floor and bounced out the porch steps. And ever since that night— ” He leaned across the table toward Mary, his voice dropping dramatically. “— people in the house have sometimes heard a thumping noise, and seen the suitor’s head, dripping gore, bouncing down the steps.”
Mary and Bysshe shared a delicious shiver. George gave Bysshe a thoughtful look.
“D’ye credit this sort of thing, Mr. Omnibus?”
Bysshe looked up. “Oh yes.
I have a great belief in things supernatural.”
George gave an insolent smile, and Mary’s heart quickened as she recognized a trap.
“Then how can you be an atheist?” George asked.
Bysshe was startled. No one had ever asked him this question before. He gave a nervous laugh. “I am not so much opposed to God,” he said, “as I am a worshiper of Galileo and Newton. And of course an enemy of the established Church.”
“I see.”
A little smile drifted across Bysshe’s lips.
“Yes!” he said,
“I have seen God’s worshipers unsheathe
The sword of his revenge, when grace descended,
Confirming all unnatural impulses,
To satisfy their desolating deeds;
And frantic priests waved the ill-omened cross
O’er the unhappy earth; then shone the sun
On showers of gore from the upflashing steel
Of safe assassin— ”
“And have you seen such?” George’s look was piercing.
Bysshe blinked at him. “Beg pardon?”
“I asked if you had seen showers of gore, upflashing steel, all that sort of thing.”
“Ah. No.” He offered George a half-apologetic smile. “I do not hold warfare consonant with my principles.”
“Yes.” George’s stomach rumbled once more. “It’s rather more in my line than yours. So I think I am probably better qualified to judge it... ” His lip twisted. “... and your principles.”
Mary felt her hackles rise. “Surely you don’t dispute that warfare is a great evil,” she said. “And that the church blesses war and its outcome.”
“The church— ” He waved a hand. “The chaplains we had with us in Spain were fine men and did good work, from what I could see. Though we had damn few of them, as for the most part they preferred to judge war from their comfortable beds at home. And as for war— ay, it’s evil. Yes. Among other things.”
“Among other things!” Mary was outraged. “What other things?”
George looked at each of the officers in turn, then at Mary. “War is an abomination, I think we can all agree. But it is also an occasion for all that is great in mankind. Courage, comradeship, sacrifice. Heroism and nobility beyond the scope of imagination.”
“Glory,” said one-armed Somerset helpfully.
“Death!” snapped Mary. “Hideous, lingering death! Disease. Mutilation!” She realized she had stepped a little far, and bobbed her head toward Somerset, silently begging his pardon for bringing up his disfigurement. “Endless suffering among the starving widows and orphans,” she went on. “Early this year Bysshe and Jane and I walked across the part of France that the armies had marched over. It was a desert, my lord. Whole villages without a single soul. Women, children, and cripples in rags. Many without a roof over their head.”
“Ay,” said Harry Smith. “We saw it in Spain, all of us.”
“Miss Godwin,” said George, “those poor French people have my sympathy as well as yours. But if a nation is going to murder its rightful king, elect a tyrant, and attack every other nation in the world, then it can but expect to receive that which it giveth. I reserve far greater sympathy for the poor orphans and widows of Spain, Portugal, and the Low Countries.”
“And England,” said Captain Austen.
“Ay,” said George, “and England.”
“I did not say that England has not suffered,” said Mary. “Anyone with eyes can see the victims of the war. And the victims of the Corn Bill as well.”
“Enough.” George threw up his hands. “I heard enough debate on the Corn Bill in the House of Lords— I beg you, not here.”
“People are starving, my lord,” Mary said quietly.
“But thanks to Waterloo,” George said, “they at least starve in peace.”
“Here’s our flesh!” said a relieved Harry Smith. Napkins flourished, silverware rattled, the dinner was laid down. Bysshe took a bite of his cheese pie, then sampled one of the little Brabant cabbages and gave a freckled smile— he had not, as had Mary, grown tired of them. Smith, Somerset, and George chatted about various Army acquaintances, and the others ate in silence. Somerset, Mary noticed, had come equipped with a combination knife-and-fork and managed his cutlet efficiently.
George, she noted, ate only a little, despite the grumblings of his stomach.
“Is it not to your taste, my lord?” she asked.
“My appetite is off.” Shortly.
“That light cavalry figure don’t come without sacrifice,” said Smith. “I’m an infantryman, though,” brandishing knife and fork, “and can tuck in to my vittles.”
George gave him an irritated glance and sipped at his hock.
“Cavalry, infantry, Senior Service, staff,” he said, pointing at himself, Smith, Austen, and Somerset with his fork. The fork swung to Bysshe. “Do you, sir, have an occupation? Besides being atheistical, I mean.”
Bysshe put down his knife and fork and answered deliberately. “I have been a scientist, and a reformer, and a sort of an engineer. I have now taken up poetry.”
“I didn’t know it was something to be taken up,” said George.
“Captain Austen’s sister does something in the literary line, I believe,” Harry Smith said.
Austen gave a little shake of his head. “Please, Harry. Not here.”
“I know she publishes anonymously, but— ”
“She doesn’t want it known,” firmly, “and I prefer her wishes be respected.”
Smith gave Austen an apologetic look. “Sorry, Frank.”
Mary watched Austen’s distress with amusement. Austen had a spinster sister, she supposed— she could just imagine the type— who probably wrote ripe horrid Gothic novels, all terror and dark battlements and cloaked sensuality, all to the constant mortification of the family.
Well, Mary thought. She should be charitable. Perhaps they were good.
She and Bysshe liked a good gothic, when they were in the mood. Bysshe had even written a couple, when he was fifteen or so.
George turned to Bysshe. “That was your own verse you quoted?”
“Yes.”
“I thought perhaps it was, as I hadn’t recognized it.”
“Queen Mab,” said Claire. “It’s very good.” She gave Bysshe a look of adoration that sent a weary despairing cry through Mary’s nerves. “It’s got all Bysshe’s ideas in it,” she said.
“And the publisher?”
“I published it myself,” Bysshe said, “in an edition of seventy copies.”
George raised an eyebrow. “A self-published phenomenon, forsooth. But why so few?”
“The poem is a political statement in accordance with Mr. Godwin’s Political Justice. Were it widely circulated, the government might act to suppress it, and to prosecute the publisher.” He gave a shudder. “With people like Lord Ellenborough in office, I think it best to take no chances.”
“Lord Ellenborough is a great man,” said Captain Austen firmly.
Mary was surprised at his emphatic tone.
“He led for Mr. Warren Hastings, do you know, during his trial,” Austen continued, “and that trial lasted seven years or more and ended in acquittal. Governor Hastings did me many a good turn in India— he was the making of me. I’m sure I owe Lord Ellenborough my purest gratitude.”
Bysshe gave Austen a serious look. “Lord Ellenborough sent Daniel Eaton to prison for publishing Thomas Paine,” he said. “And he sent Leigh Hunt to prison for publishing the truth about the Prince Regent.”
“One an atheist,” Austen scowled, “the other a pamphleteer.”
“Why, so am I both,” said Bysshe sweetly, and, smiling, sipped his spring water. Mary wanted to clap aloud.
“It is the duty of the Lord Chief Justice to guard the realm from subversion,” said Somerset. “We were at war, you know.”
“We are no longer at war,” said Bysshe, “and Lord Ellenborough still sends good folk to prison.”
“At least,” said Mary, “he can no longer accuse reformers of being Jacobins. Not with France under the Bourbons again.”
“Of course he can,” Bysshe said. “Reform is an idea, and Jacobinism is an idea, and Ellenborough conceives them the same.”
“But are they not?” George said.
Mary’s temper flared. “Are you serious? Comparing those who seek to correct injustice with those who— ”
“Who cut the heads off everyone with whom they disagreed?” George interrupted. “I’m perfectly serious. Robespierre was the very type of reformer— virtuous, sober, sedate, educated, a spotless private life. And how many thousands did he murder?” He jabbed his fork at Bysshe again, and Mary restrained the impulse to slap it out of his hand. “You may not like Ellenborough’s sentencing, but a few hours in the pillory or a few months in prison ain’t the same as beheading. And that’s what reform in England would come to in the end— mobs and demagogues heaping up death, and then a dictator like Cromwell, or worse luck Bonaparte, to end liberty for a whole generation.”
“I do not look to the French for a model,” said Bysshe, “but rather to America.”
“So did the French,” said George, “and look what they got.”
“If France had not desperately needed reform,” Bysshe said, “there would have been nothing so violent as their revolution. If England reforms itself, there need be no violence.”
“Ah. So if the government simply resigns, and frame-breakers and agitators and democratic philosophers and wandering poets take their place, then things shall be well in England.”
“Things will be better in any case,” Bysshe said quietly, “than they are now.”
“Exactly!” Claire said.
George gave his companions a knowing look. See how I humor this vagabond? Mary read. Loathing stirred her heart.
Bysshe could read a look as well as Mary. His face darkened.
“Please understand me,” he said. “I do not look for immediate change, nor do I preach violent revolution. Mr. Godwin has corrected that error in my thought. There will be little amendment for years to come. But Ellenborough is old, and the King is old and mad, and the Regent and his loathsome brothers are not young... ”
Wall, Stone, Craft Page 2
