Outcasts Read online

  The sound woke the milk in her, and she felt the familiar ache in her breasts. “Have them come in,” Mary directed. She settled into a comfortable chair as Elise entered. She held William in a brown blanket, his face covered against the light rain.

  Polidori was struggling to his feet. “If you will excuse me,” he said. “I must go to my room and lie down. All this philosophy is exhausting.”

  Shelley offered his arm to the young man. “Fletcher, come assist the doctor. We will take you upstairs.”

  “Very kind of you,” Polidori said through gritted teeth. Between them, he limped painfully to the hallway. Pausing at the door, he looked back at Mary. “You see? I limp as badly as his lordship, yet I have not his morals. One cannot judge the inner man from the outer.” Before she could respond, he tottered out the door.

  Chapter XXIII - Childe Harold

  … as we ascended still higher, the valley assumed a more magnificent and astonishing character. Ruined castles hanging on the precipices of piny mountains; the impetuous Arve, and cottages every here and there peeping forth from among the trees, formed a scene of singular beauty.

  —Frankenstein, Volume III, Chapter I

  Elise took young William to the kitchen to make herself some tea. Ascending to the second floor, Mary found Claire and Byron already at work in the drawing room. A large table lay under sheets and stacks of paper, most of them held down with half-empty bottles of wine or assorted bibelots. One stack of paper at the corner of the table lay under a shoe. In one corner stood a hanging birdcage in which a parrot ruffled its feathers and looked out disconsolately on the world.

  Claire and Byron sat at the end of the table closest to the windows. Byron’s head bent over his paper, his whole body hunched over with the tension of composition. His mastiff lay disconsolately near his feet, massive head on its paws. Claire held a quill pen in one hand and appeared to be writing. Mary knew she was probably copying something of Byron’s out into a fair copy, something that could be sent to a publisher. The handwriting of immediate creativity, as Mary knew too well, was often crabbed and skewed, difficult to parse.

  Mary laid her wrap across a sofa back. “Shelley has gone out in the boat. How may I help?”

  Byron, engrossed in the progress of his pen across paper, ignored this exchange.

  “It is hard to think what you might do that I cannot.” With a brittle smile, Claire dipped her quill into the ink pot. “Oh, alas, we seem to have run out. Mary, dearest, perhaps you can be of some assistance after all.”

  Mary drew up a chair near the ink pot. It was nearly empty, so Mary reached for the bottle of fermented oak gall ink and carefully tipped it into the jar. She used a discarded quill to stir the ink until it was well blended, then passed it over to Claire.

  Suddenly Byron threw down his pen and leaned far back in his chair, nearly tipping it over. He passed his hand over his eyes and shook his head. “Mary? Good heavens, I did not see you there. I beg your pardon, I am completely engaged with this damned verse.”

  Mary reached across and took the pages next to Byron. She held them up to the light, reading. Byron’s scrawl was not nearly as difficult to read as Shelley’s:

  Is thy face like thy mother’s, my fair child!

  Ada! sole daughter of my house and heart?

  When last I saw thy young blue eyes, they smiled,

  And then we parted,—not as now we part,

  But with a hope.

  Sole daughter of his house and heart? Mary looked from him to Claire, whose head was bent over a verse she was copying out in her fair handwriting. Byron’s eyes were closed, his head back. Mary thought about how Claire would receive this line praising Ada, Byron’s legitimate daughter back in England. And then we parted…

  Determined to spare Claire’s feelings, Mary smiled at Byron and reached for a pen. “If you like, I will make a fair copy for you, Albé.”

  “Thank you,” said Byron. “That is most kind of you.”

  Claire looked daggers at Mary. “I am acting as Albé’s copyist,” she said. “You should give me that and I will copy it.” She held out her hand for the poem.

  Byron looked from one woman to another, pleased. “This is amusing,” he stated. “Fighting over the honor of correcting my atrocious penmanship? Shall I have Berger bring back the dueling pistols?” He glanced at the window. “It looks to be storming soon. Pray feel free to use the long drawing room, if you prefer to stay dry.”

  Ignoring Claire, Mary waved the paper in her hand. “Another canto of Childe Harold?”

  “Yes, indeed.” Byron looked even more pleased with himself. He gathered up the rest of the pages next to him and handed them to her. “Do feel free to read them.”

  Mary held them up to the light again.

  … I HAVE thought

  Too long and darkly, till my brain became,

  In its own eddy boiling and o’erwrought,

  A whirling gulf of phantasy and flame:

  And thus, untaught in youth my heart to tame,

  My springs of life were poisoned. ’Tis too late!

  Yet am I changed; though still enough the same

  In strength to bear what time cannot abate,

  And feed on bitter fruits …

  She continued on, line after line of despair and weariness. Her heart sank as his tone grew darker; here was a man succumbing to depression and defeat.

  Byron had risen to his feet and now stood with his hands behind him, facing outward. Beyond the window, grey clouds gathered over Mount Jura. “What do you think?” he growled.

  “It is … very different from your previous work,” Mary said coolly. Don’t condescend to him. The one thing he wants is honesty. “This line struck me:”

  The castled crag of Drachenfels

  Frowns o’er the wide and winding Rhine.

  “I fancy we may have passed just such a place on our trip down the Rhine two years ago. Do you not think so, Claire?”

  Claire did not look up from the letter she was copying. “It was called Castle Frankenstein, not Drachenfels,” she said sullenly.

  “Ah, yes,” Mary said. “A striking name, to be sure.” Her gaze traveled down the page. “And this is striking, too:”

  But soon he knew himself the most unfit

  Of men to herd with Man; with whom he held

  Little in common; untaught to submit

  His thoughts to others, though his soul was quelled,

  In youth by his own thoughts; still uncompelled,

  He would not yield dominion of his mind

  To spirits against whom his own rebelled;

  Proud though in desolation; which could find

  A life within itself, to breathe without mankind.

  Mary put the poem down; her hand shook a little. “This is … very powerful,” she said. “The image you raise in the mind, a man wandering alone, cast out, forlorn. Albé, it cannot be you!”

  “Can it not?” Byron’s voice held an edge; he remained turned away. “We are all of us alone in Nature, Mary. Surely you know that. Shelley does. And he understands what it is to be an outsider.”

  Mary laid her hand slowly on the table. “Yes. We all do.” She drew a stack of blank paper towards her. “If you like, I will copy this out.”

  Byron turned, his eyes now dark gray as the sky outside. “Thank you,” he said quietly. “It is most kind of you.”

  Claire threw down her pen. “Of course! Give everything over to Mary! Am I not your friend and companion, your confidant? Am I not your partner?”

  Byron glared at her, but before he could speak, Mary cut in. “Dearest, perhaps Lord Byron would prefer that you exercise your talents in another direction. Albé, did you not say yesterday that you had bought a book of stories?”

  Byron looked from Mary to Claire, a look of understanding dawning on his face. He stepped to the table and took up a small book. “Yes, quite. I would very much like to hear these ghost stories, but they are all in French, which I do not speak
. Would you favor us with a reading?” He extended the book to her.

  Claire scowled at him, then at Mary. “I cannot read it off so quickly, and besides, there is much to do!”

  “All the more reason to start early, then,” Byron said firmly. “Come now. Take the book into another room, where our conversation will not disturb you, and practice your translation. Tonight after supper you may read it to us.”

  “A capital idea!” Mary said. “Do favor us, Sister.”

  With ill grace, Claire rose and took the book from Byron’s hand. “If you wish it,” she said, her eyes on his face.

  Byron bowed solemnly. “I would be most grateful, my dear.”

  From the look on Claire’s face, it was obvious that she rarely heard this endearment. Flushing slightly, she nodded and went quickly out of the room.

  When she was gone, Byron drew in a long breath and let it out. “I feel that I should thank you,” he said to Mary. “Claire becomes … oppressive.”

  “I perceive a change in you, Albé,” Mary said. “Since we returned from Geneva.”

  Byron ran a hand through his locks. “It’s that damned Caro’s book. It will ruin her.”

  “And will it ruin you?”

  His smile was bitter. “I doubt it is possible to sully my reputation further than it has been. But she, she has a son and a husband, and they will be affected by society’s cruel revenge. You see, she has not only targeted myself, but everyone in our set. Oh, that fiend, she has a gift for grotesquerie. Everyone in Mayfair and Piccadilly will recognize themselves, and cut her dead.”

  Mary took up a knife to trim a new quill. “And you still care for her that much?”

  Byron stared past her at the wall. “I care for them all,” he said. “That’s the damnation of it.”

  A smile caught the corner of Mary’s mouth. “So you are not, after all, the scoundrel you would have us all believe.”

  “Believe it, madam. I am all devil on the inside. Do not be misled by what you see.”

  “I rarely am,” she replied. She dipped her pen in the inkwell, drew it across the lip. “All my life, people have judged me by things that are not, well, me.”

  Byron threw himself into his chair. “Such as?”

  “My mother’s name. My father’s name. Now, Shelley’s philosophy.”

  “Are you not named for your mother, and your father? Are you not even now practicing that philosophy of Shelley’s?”

  “My name is not me,” she said. “As you are not Albé. You are not Childe Harold or your Corsair. You are George Gordon Noel Byron, or maybe you are another name that your mother or sister called you. You are all these names and none of them.”

  “Perhaps we should dispense with names altogether,” Byron drawled. He cocked his head on one side. “That would be a pretty experiment, to write a character who has no name at all. How could that happen, to go through life without a name?”

  “A child who dies at birth sometimes is not given a name,” Mary said bleakly. “Religious throw away their names when they take the veil. The poor are lucky to have a surname, the rich have half a dozen.” She looked up at Byron. “And the fatherless have no name. The nameless are the unluckiest of all. I pray you, Albé, remember that.”

  Chapter XXIV - Ambush

  I perceived in the gloom a figure which stole from behind a clump of trees near me; I stood fixed, gazing intently: I could not be mistaken. A flash of lightning illuminated the object, and discovered its shape plainly to me; its gigantic stature, and the deformity of its aspect, more hideous than belongs to humanity, instantly informed me that it was the wretch, the filthy dæmon, to whom I had given life.

  —Frankenstein, Volume II, Chapter VI

  The night had cleared somewhat, but there was a smell of rain on the breeze. As Mary, Claire and Shelley left the eaves of the Villa Diodati, more clouds scudded across the face of the moon, darkening their path.

  They had rounded a path, and the Villa Diodati was out of sight, when Shelley stopped, his whole body rigid. “What’s that?”

  Mary walked on a step before realizing he had stopped. “What—?”

  “Shhh!” Shelley spun on his heel. He peered back along their path, looking past Claire and up towards the meandering path that led back to the Villa. He stepped to one side quickly and stuck both hands into the pockets of his greatcoat. He drew out his pistols; Mary heard him cock them. “Stand back!” he hissed. “There is someone in those trees!”

  Mary glanced around. Their path had only just entered a shadow cast by a huge oak. She looked forward into the darkness, backwards up the path, but saw nothing untoward. She strained her ears but heard only the drip of water from the leaves and Claire’s soft footfalls behind them.

  Shelley took a step forward, his pistols held in front of him. His hands did not shake; his attitude was alert. “Who’s there?” he called. Claire gasped, her hand coming up to her mouth. Then she fled towards them, her face white.

  “Oh, what is it?” she cried as she reached Mary. Mary flung an arm around her and shook her head to quiet her. They both watched as Shelley advanced further up the path. Above them the lights of the Maison Chapuis flared and dimmed as fog flowed silently between the house and themselves. Far below, Mary heard the lap-lap of waves against stone. A breeze rustled the leaves overhead.

  “Someone’s whispering!” Claire said excitedly. “Listen!”

  “It’s the leaves,” Mary said.

  “No! I hear them! They’re assassins—”

  “Shhh!” Shelley glared at them over his shoulder, the shock of hair on his head casting dark shadows on his face. “Be quiet!”

  Claire subsided, but Mary could feel her trembling under her arm. Mary wondered if one of them should run back to the Villa Diodati for help. Or down to the Maison. Mary straightened. In any event, any attackers would not find her swooning and afraid. She peered into the shadows.

  “Is anyone there?” Shelley called again, pointing his pistols at the empty path. “Show yourself!”

  The only answer was a gust of wind that shook more drops from the oak leaves, spattering them. Claire jumped, Mary hugged her more tightly. A thousand years seemed to pass, and Mary felt the cold seeping through her thin dress. Finally, Shelley pointed the pistols skyward. She heard the click-click of the flintlocks as he lowered them. He turned, and his face was pale in the moonlight. “Did you hear them?”

  Mary shook her head wordlessly; Claire blurted, “Yes! Whispering! I heard them!”

  “No, that was only the—” Mary began.

  Shelley motioned them forward. “Quickly. We must get to the house.”

  Claire shrugged away from Mary and put her hand on Shelley’s arm. “It’s them, isn’t it? The ones who attacked you in Wales?”

  Mary remembered Shelley’s tale of being awakened one night in his rented cottage, of answering the door and being struck senseless by an assailant. Although the tale had met with skepticism, Mary knew that her lover’s revolutionary ideas had made him a target of government spies. She shivered, wondering what brigand with a government’s warrant lay in wait for them in the night.

  Shelley said nothing, peering into the darkness under the trees. He put one of the pistols back into his pocket and reached out his hand for Mary, ignoring Claire. “Come.”

  Mary grasped his hand, and he pulled her strongly to him. Holding the other pistol at the ready, he advanced down the path, deeper into the darkness.

  A tiny shriek behind them: “Don’t leave me!”

  Mary glanced back in irritation. “Come along then! Don’t dawdle!”

  Claire scurried after them, clutching at Shelley’s coat.

  “Don’t hang on my arm,” Shelley said tersely, shaking her off with the hand holding the gun. Claire whimpered and scuttled close to Mary.

  Huddled together, the three of them walked down the muddy path towards the lighted windows of Maison Chapuis. As they left the shadow of the trees behind, Shelley relaxed a little. “D
o you go in, Mary,” he said to her quietly. “Lock all the doors and windows. I shall take a tour of the grounds, to make sure we are alone.”

  Claire clutched at him. “Oh, no! No! You must not go out there alone.”

  Mary grabbed Claire’s hand and enfolded it in her own. Claire’s was shaking. “Come now, be calm, sister. There’s nothing out there. It was … an owl, was it not, Shelley?”

  He was not looking at her, but rather scanning the vineyard on either side of them, waist high and in full summer leaf. Mary wondered if men were hiding in it. The idea did not alarm her, however; it was as if Claire’s fear had sucked all the fear out of her, and she could face whatever danger may lie in wait with calm. Shelley himself showed no fear, only an alert demeanor. His hand holding the pistol did not shake.

  They had reached the end of the path and were at the kitchen door at the uphill or rear side of the house. Mary tried the door and found it unlocked, to her chagrin. She held it open for Claire, who darted in and then hovered inside. The smell of ashes and ripe fruit floated out, along with a breath of heated air from the oven. A single rushlight burned in the window. Mary stepped into the doorway, looking back at Shelley.

  In the faint moonlight, he was a tall shadow, a footstep, a whisper of movement. A cold gust rattled the leaves of the rhododendron next to the kitchen door. Shelley stalked across the small lawn, his head turning from side to side. Mary remembered his stories of hunting with his father when he grew up. He walked out of sight around a corner. Mary withdrew into the kitchen, closed the door and shot the bolt across it.

  Claire stood white-faced in the kitchen, pressed up against the table. Her hands covered her mouth and her eyes were huge in her face. Mary found a candle end and lit it from the rushlight. “Come. We will check through the rest of the house.”

  “No!” Claire squeaked. “What if there is someone in here? What if someone is hiding?” Her eyes went to the dark doorway leading to the hall.

  “Then you stay here and I shall check,” said Mary with determination. “No doubt Elise—”

  “No! Don’t leave me!” Claire’s hand shot out and gripped Mary’s arm painfully. The candle dipped and bobbed, dancing shadows all over the kitchen.