Outcasts

by Sarah Stegall

  Byron raised an eyebrow and his glass. “Well, damn me,” he said. “A jealous husband? A jilted lover, perhaps?”

  Shelley glanced up, his look cool as he reached for the gunpowder bag. “A government agent.”

  Byron cocked his head to one side. “A vice and morals committee? Were you arrested for not going to church?”

  “I was fired upon in my home,” Shelley said calmly. “On a night in February. I heard someone in the house, and went to look.”

  “Forsaking your pistols?” Byron said archly.

  “By no means. I had one with me. I saw someone at the window, and a shot was fired through it. I attempted to return fire, but the powder flashed in the pan. The fiend entered through the window and beat me nearly senseless.” Having finished, Shelley fired.

  Crack! A twig fell from a high branch.

  Byron scowled. “You alerted the authorities? It’s a damned thing, when a gentleman is attacked in his own house.”

  “It was not my house,” Shelley said, reaching for a cloth. “I had rented a cottage in Wales.”

  Byron looked at Mary. “And you, were you not frightened?”

  “I was not there,” she said calmly. “I had not yet met Shelley.”

  “Did they catch the fellow?”

  “No, although I gave them a drawing of the fiend,” Shelley said. “And it was a fiend, I am persuaded. A demon from another region.”

  Byron stared. “You can jest about this?”

  “Shelley thinks it was a demon, but I suspect a more worldly assailant,” Mary said. “Shelley was engaged in a political war between landowners and sheep men.”

  “Well, it’s damnable,” Byron snorted. “People are mad, I tell you. I am followed day and night, and stared at wherever I go. One grows accustomed, or stays indoors.”

  Mary shook her head. “Oh, but it is not the same, Albé. You are a notorious rake, someone to condemn with a smile. You threaten aristocrats in their drawing rooms. My Shelley attacks the world at its roots: politics and religion. Men have been guillotined for less.”

  Berger, who had been loading a pistol, handed it to Byron. He took it absently, pointing it skyward. “So that is why you travel armed, Shelley. I had wondered.”

  Shelley had finished loading and picked up the pistols. “Never with fewer than three pair,” he said. “We have killed all the wine bottles,” he said practically. “What shall we culp next?”

  “A card? No, we will need all of them later. Perhaps a portrait we do not like? Fletcher, go get that hideous thing over the study fireplace and bring it out here.”

  Shelley shook his head. “No, too large. How say you to a gold piece? Affix one to yonder tree trunk, and we will see who can come closest to it.”

  Byron brightened. “Excellent. I used to practice thus at Manton’s shooting gallery. But I have not a shilling. Mary? Can you accommodate us?”

  Mary felt her cheeks grow warm with embarrassment. Their funds were too low to waste a sixpence, let alone a shilling, on sport. “I fear that I left my reticule at home,” she said quietly.

  Byron reached into his waistcoat. “See here if I have—yes! My purse. Capital! We shall shoot at this half crown!” He held up the round gold coin.

  Mary gulped. A half crown would buy food, clothes, and candles for a week. She felt a trickle of annoyance. She heard her father’s voice in her head: Money belongs to those who need it. The principle of utilitarianism was sound, and her lifelong belief in it now rebelled at this waste of good money. She stood suddenly, tugging at her sleeve. “Here. Use this.” She held out her handkerchief.

  Byron looked at her in surprise. “Your handkerchief? What gentleman would shoot at a lady’s pocket square? Really, we are not barbarians!”

  She waved it at him impatiently. “Truly, it is of less worth than that half crown, my lord. And the money may be put to better use.”

  She glanced at Shelley, but he was staring out over the lawn at the lake, thinking. She knew he could not hear them.

  A sardonic smile curled in the corner of Byron’s mouth. “And what better use can money be put to, than to entertain us? But if you wish it, it will be so. Allow me to purchase your linen, Madame Mary.” With a flourish and a bow, Byron handed her the coin and took the handkerchief.

  Heat flooded Mary’s cheeks. “No, you do not understand. I did not mean, that is, it was not my intent—”

  Byron chuckled and waved the white square. “Too late, my dear. Too late. And now for our target …” He tucked the handkerchief into his sleeve and drew forth a sixpence from his pocket. “Ah, a lesser coin. This will do nicely. Fletcher, set it against that lower limb on the birch yonder.” The servant moved off with the coin winking in his hand.

  Mary’s embarrassed flush now turned to anger. “I meant for you not to waste coin. You mock me, my lord.” Her voice shook a little.

  Byron burst into laughter. “Waste coin? My good Mary, I have wasted vast oceans of them. Oceans, rivers, deserts of coin. You cannot imagine the line of debtors at my door in Mayfair. I married for money and wasted that, too.” His laughter died, he scowled, and suddenly raised the pistol and fired. And missed. “Damn! See what you made me do!”

  “Albé, you fired of your own will, in a fit of rage. You cannot blame me if your passions overcome you.”

  Byron turned to her, mouth open, incredulous, poised for a retort.

  “Maisie—” Shelley put a hand on her arm, but stood next to her. “I must agree, Byron. You make yourself disagreeable only out of perversity. Or drink. This canker of aristocracy ill becomes you. Consider, for example, Polidori. The doctor is a man—”

  “A man!” Byron swung to the table, caught his bad foot on a clod of lawn, and stumbled. “Damn the man!” He gripped the edge of the table. “Not even a doctor. See how I still hobble, though I pay him to un-hobble me.” Mary stepped forward to offer support, but he waved her away angrily. “As for cankers, what sore upon the ass of society is it who consistently calls for its destruction? You, a country squire, calling for democracy? A country patriot, born to hunt, and vote, and raise the price of corn. Pah!” Reeling now, he stumbled towards the house. “Damn you all!”

  Berger stepped past his master to open the door. Byron stumped through it and the servant followed him in. Mary and Shelley were left alone with the smell of gunpowder and the approaching storm. The damp wind ruffled Shelley’s hair as he frowned after Byron. “A country squire?” His voice was soft but full of emotion. “Does he think I care?”

  Mary patted his arm. “Pay him no mind.”

  “But I must, my pet. He is the voice of a generation, whether he knows it or not. His poetry is read at every level of government, which means his thoughts are known at every level. And though I admire him for how he says it, I do not always agree with what he says. He presumes an inferiority between us which is wholly artificial, unjustifiable, and unnatural. The true difference between us exists nowhere in reality but in our own talents, which are not our own but Nature’s—or in our rank—which is not our own but Fortune’s.” Shelley stared down at his feet and kicked at the clod where Byron had stumbled. “Sometimes I think he is a slave to the vilest and most vulgar prejudices, and as mad as the winds.”

  A raindrop plopped on Mary’s hand, another on her cheek. Thunder rumbled overhead. “We must go in, my love. A storm is coming.”

  Shelley looked up, oblivious to the rain pelting his cheeks. “A storm. Yes.”

  Chapter XXII - Ada and Augusta

  I discovered that he, the author at once of my existence and of its unspeakable torments, dared to hope for happiness; that while he accumulated wretchedness and despair upon me he sought his own enjoyment in feelings and passions from the indulgence of which I was forever barred.

  —Frankenstein, Volume III, Chapter VII

  The rain commenced as they entered the Villa; Shelley left the door open so that the smell of rain and lake water wafted through the building. They heard Byron stumping along
ahead of them, shouting for Fletcher. On the sofa, Polidori was sifting through some papers.

  “His lordship’s limp grows worse when he is downcast,” he said.

  “The outward sign of the inner man,” Shelley mused. “How often we judge our fellow creatures by their externalities, by which we are so often misled. Why do we never learn better?”

  “You yourself have said it,” Mary reminded him. “In Queen Mab, do you not recall? ‘The beauty of the internal nature cannot be so far concealed by its accidental vesture.’ Does that not mean that if Albé’s external appearance is beautiful, it is because it reveals the beauty of his internal nature?”

  Polidori snorted. “Poets.”

  Shelley ignored him. “But you must remember the foot,” he said. “His infirmity is part of his externalities, so it, too, shows truth. Our Albé is a flawed man, in every definition.”

  “I fear that we have yet to see his darkest side. That will come soon enough. Claire cannot forebear to give him the news much longer. Polidori has already guessed her condition.”

  Shelley glanced sharply at the young doctor, who nodded. Shelley shoved a stack of books off a divan and sprawled across it. “Truth will out,” he said. “Deception is always abhorrent to me. You know my mind in this, that when we expose the deformities of human nature, only then can we begin to reform it.”

  “This is not a deformity likely to be exposed soon,” Mary said. “B sees himself as an outcast, a monster because of his foot. Or so Doctor Polidori says.” She seated herself on a low stool near the sofa. “How is your ankle?”

  “Better. I thank you.” Polidori said. “Fletcher brought me some papers to divert me.”

  Shelley was wandering around the room restlessly. “Tell me, John. As a doctor, you must surely agree that the outward appearance of a man often disguises his inner truth. Do you not agree?”

  “Certainly,” Polidori said. “A man may appear vital and hale on the outside, while inwardly harboring a cancer.”

  “Then consider whether Albé’s crusty attitude may merely be the hard turtle shell that hides a softer, more easily damaged heart,” Mary said. “If he teases you, it is only a form of defense, much like the over-matched force that sallies from a beleaguered castle to engage the enemy by surprise, hoping to overwhelm it.”

  “Consider, Mrs. Shelley, that a man’s outward appearance may also accurately reflect his inner self,” Polidori said coolly. “As his actions reflect his character.”

  Mary stiffened. “And what may we say of a man who hits his employer with an oar?”

  Before he could answer, they heard Claire’s voice in the foyer.

  Shelley and Mary locked eyes, and turned as one when the door opened. Fletcher bowed Claire in. “If you’ll be waitin’ here, Miss, I’ll see if his lordship is at home.”

  Claire entered, wearing a light green sprigged muslin gown, untying her bonnet. “Oh, Polly, I did not know you were here.” She dropped a curtsy, and the doctor replied with a stiff bow from his position on the sofa. “Why Shelley, your face is as black as soot! Whatever have you been doing?”

  “Killing Albé’s wine bottle collection,” Shelley said.

  Claire’s bright gaze went from him to Mary. “Do you know, dear Mary, Albé is actually working on another canto of Childe Harold? Is it not thrilling?”

  “Of course,” Mary said. Her heart gladdened to see Claire so happy. Perhaps, after all, there could be some rapprochement between her and Byron.

  Fletcher re-appeared in the doorway. “Miss, his lordship sends his compliments, and asks if you would join him on the balcony.”

  “Tell his lordship I shall come directly. It is awfully windy today! And Albé will be dictating, and I shall have to weight down my papers with brandy bottles and ink pots!” Pausing, she looked at Mary. “We have a great deal to do today. Mary, is it possible you could assist us?” She said the ‘us’ with a proprietary air.

  “I shall join you in a few moments,” Mary said.

  Claire dimpled. “We shall have such a wonderful afternoon!” She dashed through the doorway.

  Polidori looked after her for a moment, then shook his head. “You will pardon me, Mr. Shelley, Mrs. Shelley. But I fear that for all her hopes, his lordship regards her only in the light of, er, an amanuensis.”

  Shelley lifted an eyebrow. “More than that, clearly.”

  Polidori did not, as Mary expected, rise to the bait. He held out the paper he was holding. “I found this verse among some of his papers this morning.”

  “More of Childe Harold?” Shelley said eagerly.

  But before Shelley could take it, Polidori delivered it into Mary’s hand.

  A single sheet of paper, covered with Byron’s scrawl, with blottings and scratchings-out. And, she was shocked to note, blotches that could only have been dried tears. Tears? From Byron?

  Shelley leaned close to read over her shoulder, but she turned away, seeking better light.

  … Though thy soul with my grief was acquainted,

  It shrunk not to share it with me,

  And the love which my spirit hath painted

  It never hath found but in thee….

  Mary scanned down further.

  From the wreck of the past, which hath perish’d,

  Thus much I at least may recall,

  It hath taught me that what I most cherish’d

  Deserved to be dearest of all:

  In the desert a fountain is springing,

  In the wide waste there still is a tree,

  And a bird in the solitude singing,

  Which speaks to my spirit of thee.

  She turned the paper over, looking for an inscription or a title, and found it: Stanzas to Augusta.

  Tears blurred her vision, and she let her hand fall. Shelley snatched up the paper, reading it quickly. He let out a long sigh and handed it back to Polidori. “Give this back to his lordship,” he said quietly. “Don’t tell Byron we have seen it.”

  “Augusta Leigh is his half-sister. He writes to her still,” Polidori said quietly. “I … I mean no offense to Miss Clairmont, but you can see how … he will never….”

  Shelley laid a hand on Mary’s shoulder. “Of course, it was rumored all over London.”

  Mary nodded. “His own sister!”

  “Half-sister, actually,” Polidori said. “They had the same father, and different mothers. They were raised separately.”

  She glared up at him. “As if that could matter! Byron stands in the same relation to Augusta Leigh that I stand to Fanny! They have a parent in common! They are almost one flesh, and he—”

  “He loves her,” Shelley said firmly. “Can you read what we just read, and not know that? Can you not see the strength of that love, that renounces and yet remembers?”

  She paced away from him. “And what does that mean for Claire? If he is writing this to his … sister, he cannot love Claire. He will not love her.”

  “You think a man cannot love two women at once?” Shelley asked.

  Whirling, her hot retort died on her lips as she saw his grin. “Rogue! This not a matter for amusement. She is heading over a cliff, and she cannot see it.”

  The grin died on his face, and Shelley hunched his shoulders and clasped his hands behind his back. The movement made him look like one of the herons that stalked absurdly up and down the lakeshore.

  “Do you know, there were rumors of a child.” Polidori spoke in a low voice. “They say that his sister bore him a daughter two years ago. He weeps at night, and I have heard him saying the name ‘Medora’ in despair.”

  Shelley shook his head. “I daresay it’s as false as everything else we have heard about the man. Look at his politics, his philosophies. Look at his affairs. Why, Albé himself jests about his reputation. What calumny will the world of hypocrites and Custom not hurl at him?”

  “You defend him,” Mary said. “He has abandoned at least one child in England. I am given to understand that she is only a month old
er than our own William. Now you tell me there was another child, a child by his own sister? And where is this child? Does he love it? Care for it? Or has he disavowed all of his offspring at once?”

  Shelley looked distressed. “I do not know.”

  “Fletcher!” Byron’s voice floated down from the balcony. “Where the devil have you put my—oh, there it is. Come, Claire, I have some verses for you.”

  Distantly, Claire’s giggle wafted down to them from the terrace. Mary leaned on Shelley. “Albé takes her to his bed, while he writes this to another woman. He seeks indulgence and passion from Claire, while all the time his heart is elsewhere. What does this mean for your principle of love?” she asked.

  Polidori shuffled papers, his face pale, not looking at either of them.

  Shelley shrugged helplessly. “I will speak to him. I will tell him of the child. He will see reason.”

  Polidori shook his head. “His lordship is not a reasonable man,” he said. “It is his disposition to deem what he has, whether it is women or dogs, as worthless. He will not accept this child.” His tone was ominous. “I would not be the one to tell him of it.”

  Mary shook her head. “No. That is for Claire to do. Oh, why did she do it?” She whirled away from Shelley, her heart wrung.

  “Dearest? I do not understand you. You defend her, then decry her. What is amiss with you?” Shelley’s voice was gentle. As always, it undid her. She sagged, felt his arms come around her.

  “I think of her child, love. I think of him or her, unloved, unwanted by its father. I think of Claire, who loves so passionately and unrestrainedly. I think of their child, growing up despised, ignored. Oh, you do not know what Albé’s life was like, as a child. Until I saw that poem, I was not sure he could love at all.

  “And even now, I think his capacity for love is as deformed as his leg.”

  A tap at the door, and Fletcher stood looking around. “Beg pardon, sir” he said stolidly. “There be a lass with your babe at the door.” From behind him came a familiar wail.

  Shelley grinned. “Ah, the princeling arrives.”