Outcasts

by Sarah Stegall

  Mary gently pried her fingers loose. “Walk behind me, then,” she said quietly. She led the way into the hallway, and after a moment her stepsister followed, her shoes silent on the hardwood floor.

  The pantry was empty, as well as the downstairs drawing room and utility room. Mary led the way upstairs. First she turned to the nursery, where a light shone under the door. She eased the door open; Elise sat drowsing in a rocking chair beside William’s cradle. Mary peeped in and saw her son sleeping peacefully on his side, a little milky bubble at the corner of his mouth swelling and fading as he breathed. She backed out of the room, almost stepping on Claire, and shut the door. A quick examination showed the rest of the bedrooms, and her workroom, to be empty of intruders.

  “See?” she said quietly to Claire. “There’s nothing to be afr—”

  Something banged downstairs, and Claire screamed and leaped up. “Oh my God!”

  “Mary?” called Shelley’s voice from downstairs. “Are you there?”

  Mary leaned over the railing of the staircase. “We are up here, love. All is well.”

  Shelley’s head appeared at the bottom of the stairs, his hair haloed in the light of his lantern. “Nothing stirring without. Perhaps it was a false alarm.”

  Claire, trembling beside Mary, shook her head vehemently. “No! You scared them away, that’s all! Oh, I am so afraid they will be back!”

  Shelley chuckled. “Two little mice,” he teased. “I shall build a fire, and we shall have light and stories.”

  Mary forbore to remind him that she had not been the one afraid. Instead, she led Claire back downstairs and hung up their cloaks in the hallway. Shelley was checking each of the windows as she came into the downstairs drawing room. A fire struggled on the stones, and Mary knelt to encourage it. Claire stood in the center of the room, twisting her hands together.

  “Do you think it was bandits?” she asked. “Or perhaps someone sent to kill us?”

  “No,” said Mary sharply. “I think it was wind and shadow.”

  “Oh, more than that,” Shelley said, his smile fading. “I am certain I heard someone behind me.”

  Claire said nothing, her hands coving her mouth again. Mary poked the fire. “I did not hear anything, love,” she said firmly.

  “Do you think it was .. a ghost?” Claire whispered. “Or … or a demon?”

  “Not a demon,” Shelley said seriously, considering the question. He strode to Claire and took her hands. “Why, you’re shivering, my dear! Come, sit by the fire and have some brandy.” Tenderly, he led Claire to a chair before the fire and arranged a shawl around her shoulders. “We shall all have some brandy. Mary?”

  “A little,” she said. “We need more wood.”

  “I shall fetch it directly,” Shelley said, striding out of the room. His boots echoed on the floor, and they heard the door open and shut.

  “Claire, I do wish you would contrive to restrain your fears,” Mary said quietly. “You set Shelley off when you shriek as you did on the path.”

  “Not all of us are made of ice,” Claire said. “I have too great a sensibility to pretend otherwise. I feel things, you know. Especially those things of the dark world.”

  Mary poked at a log more forcefully than necessary. “I really have no patience with this nonsense,” she said, her mouth firm. “You know there is no dark world. It is only the superstition brought on by the corruption of our intellect by religious cant. Use your reason, Claire.”

  The front door opened, and a cold breeze gusted into the room. Shelley came through with an armload of wood, banging the door behind him. He dumped the wood on the hearth and stood again, shrugging off his greatcoat. “It is coming up to storm,” he said. “A fine, noisy one!” His eyes shone with excitement.

  Mary put a log on the fire. The flames leaped up and she settled onto her knees a little way back from it.

  “I shall scream, I know it!” Claire said, hugging herself.

  “I’m sure of it, also,” Mary said dryly.

  She caught an amused sideways glance from Shelley, who strode to the sideboard. “Here’s a spirit more suited to the night,” he said, pouring brandy. He handed Claire a glass of brandy, offered Mary another. She took it and held it in her hands. He flung himself onto the floor in front of the fire, his boots almost in the flames. He flung his wind-tousled hair impatiently out of his eyes. “Here’s to spirits dark and light,” he said ominously, raising his glass.

  “Do you think it was a spirit you saw?” Claire whispered. She inched closer to Shelley.

  “I thought you said you did not see anything,” Mary said.

  “I didn’t. I thought I heard something on the path behind us.”

  “Most likely it was one of Albé’s awful hounds,” Mary said. The fumes of the brandy, warmed by her hand, rose to her nose. She inhaled. “Or perhaps a fox, hunting the owl. Surely it is … an exaggeration to make it more than that.”

  Shelley laughed. “My little Dormouse has nerves of steel. Were I ever to go into battle, my love, I would want you beside me.”

  “What did it say to you?” Claire asked, ignoring Mary. She sipped more brandy.

  “I thought I heard it say my name.” Shelley frowned into the fire.

  Cold crept over Mary. “Your name?” She sat down next to Shelley, gathering her skirts around her. “Are you certain it was not … an agent? Like the one in Wales?”

  “They follow me everywhere,” Shelley said darkly. He stared into the fire, his eyes wide. “I know one was following me all through England last winter. I thought that here, away from London, we could lose them, but they are very hounds of hell.”

  “Oh, Shelley!” Claire breathed. “Like the one who attacked you in your house? We must call a gendarme!”

  Mary looked sharply at her stepsister. “I pray you will not continue in this way,” she said. “We are safe now. Let us discuss something else.”

  But Shelley was not listening. “Perhaps it was a doppelgänger,” he said, staring into the fire.

  “What is that?” asked Claire.

  “A double. Sort of like a twin, only not born to the same mother.” Shelley sipped at his glass, one hand idly stroking Mary’s hair. “To see it is a harbinger of death.”

  Mary felt a tiny shiver go through her. It was true that Shelley was hated for his politics, his atheism. Absurd to think that anyone would resent them enough to do him harm and yet … it was true that he had been attacked in Wales, knocked senseless in Keswick. Whether it was a failed robbery or an act stemming from more sinister political motives, still he had been hurt. Her fingers curled into a fist on his chest, her jaw tightening. The thought that someone would hurt her gentle lover enraged her. She was small, she thought, but even a dormouse can defend its own.

  “Let us have something more cheerful,” she said. “Shelley, what have you written today?”

  He shrugged and looked at Claire. “What has Albé written today?”

  Claire held out her hands to the fire. “I recall one passage:

  Eternal spirit of the chainless mind!

  Brightest in dungeons, Liberty! thou art,

  For there thy habitation is the heart,

  The heart which love of thee alone can bind.

  “Eternal spirit of the chainless mind,” Shelley repeated slowly. “A good image. From a heart that loves liberty.”

  “Yes!” Claire sat up abruptly. “You do understand, don’t you, Shelley! Byron loves liberty, just as you do! You know his heart is one with ours!”

  Mary sighed. When would Claire abandon her fantasies? “Claire, he does not love you. He may love liberty, and poetry, and the chainless mind, but he does not love you.”

  “How can you be so heartless!” Claire cried. “Can a heart so pure, a mind so attached to liberty and freedom, be as cold as you imagine? Or is it that you confuse your cold heart with his warm one?”

  Mary sat up. “You do yourself no good by this,” she said. Her hair had come down. She put up
a hand to re-arrange it, but Shelley caught her hand. She left it in his as her hair fell to her shoulders. “Claire, you want him to love you as … as Shelley and I love one another. But it will never be. Albé is not Shelley—”

  “As I am not you! Yes, I understand!” Claire got to her feet, her face red with anger. “Yes, you need not repeat yourself. I know how much you want Shelley for yourself. As if any man could be chained like a dog! Albé does love me! He does, and I will show you!”

  Shelley propped himself on his elbows. “Claire, dearest, don’t put yourself into a pet like this. Come lie down—”

  “No!” Claire caught up a throw from the divan behind her. “I won’t stay here with you. Mary wants you for herself. Mary must get what Mary wants!” With that bitter taunt, she swept the throw around her and stamped out of the room. In a moment, they heard the front door slam.

  Shelley rolled to his side, getting to his feet. “I had better go after her—”

  Mary put a hand on his arm. “No, love. Let her be. She will go to Byron.”

  “Alone? I must go with her!”

  Mary smiled. “I pity the scoundrel who accosts my sister in her present mood. She is likely to kill him.”

  Shelley caressed her face. “Is it true, what she said? You want me all to yourself? Are you so selfish and backward as all that?” His tone softened the words, but they fell like a blow on her heart. She looked away.

  “It is only that you seem so much more involved with Claire and Albé these days. You hardly have time for me.”

  He tangled his fist in her long golden hair and tugged her downward to his mouth. “I have time for my Maie, always. My life is yours.”

  His kiss, as usual, sent her thoughts flying. He tasted of brandy, and the warmth of him seeped all through her in ways the fire never could. His arms came up around her, he pressed her to him—

  From upstairs, a wail.

  Shelley broke the kiss and let his arms fall to his sides. With an ironic chuckle, he said, “We are doomed to constant interruption, beloved.”

  Mary rolled off of him and stood. Already she heard footsteps on the stairs as Elise brought her charge down. “Be glad he slept as long as he did,” she said. “Soon he will be sleeping through the night.”

  “And we will not,” Shelley said.

  Mary let a small smile curl on her lips, as she thought of white linen sheets, thunder, and Shelley in the night.

  Chapter XXV - Claire’s Fury

  “Shall each man,” cried he, “find a wife for his bosom, and each beast have his mate, and I be alone? I had feelings of affection, and they were requited by detestation and scorn. Man! you may hate; but beware! your hours will pass in dread and misery, and soon the bolt will fall which must ravish from you your happiness for ever. Are you to be happy while I grovel in the intensity of my wretchedness?

  —Frankenstein, Volume III, Chapter III

  A door slammed, someone pounded up the stairs.

  “Claire.” Mary’s voice was grim. Shelley slid quickly out of the bed and pulled on his trousers. Mary found her night rail and struggled into it, silently damning her step-sister’s usual awful timing.

  “Oh, damn that man. Damn, damn, damn!” Claire was sobbing into Shelley’s chest when Mary, puffing, finally caught up with them in Claire’s room.

  “Here, sit down,” Shelley said, guiding Claire to sit on the bed. “Dry your eyes.” He searched in his waistcoat for a handkerchief in vain. Giving up on his search, Shelley pulled his shirt out of his waistband and used the tail to dab tenderly at Claire’s swollen eyes. “My dear, compose yourself. Tell me what’s wrong.”

  “Oh, God, that man will kill me,” she wailed.

  Mary winced. “You will wake the neighbors.”

  “I don’t care!” Claire cried. “Let them know what a … a monster he is! Unfeeling, uncaring monster!”

  “Whatever has he said now?” Shelley asked.

  “Nothing! He said nothing! He did not need to!” Claire flung up her head dramatically. “He told Fletcher to deny me!”

  Shelley frowned. “I don’t understand.”

  “Nor did I, until I pushed past him into the villa,” Claire said. She sniffed, and wiped her nose on Shelley’s shirt tail.

  He sat down beside her on the bed and put his arm around her shoulders. “Tell me everything.”

  Mary, feeling ignored, sat quietly in a chair.

  “He was with that wretched chambermaid!” Claire cried. Her voice rang off the stones of the small terrace. “The cruel, un-feeling monster that he is! I went up to his room. I heard him inside. I wanted to … to surprise him. He sometimes likes it when I surprise him.” She sniffed again. She looked up at Shelley, her eyes full of tears. “He was with the maid! That fat, freckled one who clears up after supper!”

  Shelley chuckled and patted her hand where it lay on his knee. “Oh, now, really, Claire! Is that something to get upset about?”

  Men would never understand, Mary thought. It just was not in Shelley’s nature to lay claim to another, but women, who had the care and feeding of the young, formed stronger attachments. She was sure of it.

  “How can you say that! She’s … she’s old!” Claire’s eyes were alive with anger, her cheeks pink. “She must be thirty if she’s a day!”

  Mary smiled bitterly. “A veritable ancient,” she said quietly. “Why, his lordship himself is a dotard of eight and twenty!”

  Claire jumped to her feet. “You are merely jealous!” she cried. “You care nothing for how he rends my heart!”

  “But if that is so, why do you pursue him?” Shelley asked, puzzled. “Are you not in agreement with Godwin’s teachings? That two persons should not remain together out of stale custom or habit, but only in mutual love?”

  “But he does love me, I know it!” Claire said defiantly. “It is only that he cannot bring himself to say it!”

  “Which is why, naturally, he takes his servant to bed and denies you the very door,” Mary said dryly. “I fear there is a flaw in your argument.”

  Claire burst into tears. “You wretch. You have everything, I have nothing, and yet you mock me! How can you? Oh, how can you? I want to die!”

  “No, you merely want to wake the neighbors with one of your exhibitions,” Mary snapped. “Next time, hire a brass band so that they may hear you across the lake!”

  “Mary!” said Shelley, shocked. He started to rise, but in that moment, a white-faced Claire snatched a vase of flowers from the bedside table and hurled it at Mary. Only the dim light and Claire’s agitation saved Mary, as the pot flew wide and shattered on the wall behind her.

  Mary sat without moving, her gaze fixed on the other woman. “Violence is the last resort of fools,” she said.

  Shelley stepped between them. “No, no, we must not have this. Come, Claire, dry your eyes. I am sure Byron will love you just as much in the morning. You must resist this possessive streak. I tell you, it is only the custom of corrupt society that makes you feel this way.”

  Mary bit her lips to keep back her retort. Shelley was right in most things, but he had a perennial blind spot where Claire was concerned.

  Sobbing, Claire clutched at Shelley’s shirt. “Oh, Shelley. Oh Shelley, if only you would … Oh, Shelley.”

  Shelley smiled and patted her fondly. “I think it would be best if you went to bed.”

  Claire looked up at him, awash. “Oh, Shelley, will you not—”

  “No, he will not,” Mary said strongly. “Claire, you are perfectly capable of coming down from your high state all by yourself. Shelley has better things to do.”

  Shelley frowned at Mary, but Claire pulled away from him. “Oh, I think you are horrid! Both of you! Neither of you cares if I die!” She turned and flung herself face down on the bed.

  Mary stepped out onto the landing, gesturing for Shelley to follow. Shelley thrust his hands under his arms, hugging himself. “I don’t understand your attitude. How—”

  “Oh, be silent!�
�� The words hissed out of her. “How can you stand her posturings, her temper? How can you be so kind to someone so thoughtless of others?”

  In moments of emotional crisis, Shelley became quiet and very honest. “Because she is like me,” he said. “Because I recognize the restless soul in her.”

  “So you, you love her? You would want a … three to a bed as well?” Mary’s cheeks were hot, her words more so. She hated herself for saying these things, words that gave the lie to what she believed. Or thought she believed. “You would want a ménage, like Polidori says?”

  Shelley shrugged. “Why not? You know we should not confine ourselves to one partner, if we so desire. My only objection to Claire is that she is being unfair to Albé. He is acting in accord with his nature. If he were to truly practice fidelity, would he not go back to his wife?”

  “That’s not what I meant! Oh, why don’t you understand me?”

  He looked at her, and in the half-light from the candles, his eyes were dark, the dark blue of the lake under a midnight sun. “I do understand you, Mary. Better than you think.” He held out a hand. “Come. Let us go back to our room.”

  He reached into the room to close the door, but Claire rose from the bed and flung herself at Shelley, weeping. “No, no you cannot! You cannot leave me like this?”

  Shelley, helpless, had one arm around Mary and the other around Claire. “My dear, what can I do? I cannot make Byron, or any man, love you. I cannot make anyone love anyone else.”

  Claire, clutching her middle, sank down on her bed, then cast herself upon it. Shelley leaned forward as if to lay a comforting hand on her, but Mary stepped away. He hesitated, then followed her back to their bedroom.

  Long after Shelley had fallen asleep with one bare arm across her, Mary heard Claire weeping.

  Chapter XXVI - The Somnambulist

  I passed the night wretchedly. Sometimes my pulse beat so quickly and hardly, that I felt the palpitation of every artery; at others, I nearly sank to the ground through languor and extreme weakness. Mingled with this horror, I felt the bitterness of disappointment: dreams that had been my food and pleasant rest for so long a space, were now become a hell to me.