Outcasts (18 page)

When Byron made no answer, Claire said, “We have several dozen lines of it already. One can almost see the mountains in his words:”

There they stand, as stands a lofty mind,

Worn, but unstooping to the baser crowd,

All tenantless, save to the crannying wind,

Or holding dark communion with the cloud.

“I like the line about ‘unstooping to the baser crowd.' Surely, on such peaks as these, only the most sublime thoughts can survive!”

“Or the man of nature,” Shelley said. “Rousseau's natural
man might live there, unimpeded by the shackles of custom and restraint.”

“Or good taste,” said Byron.

Mary sat up, setting her hat firmly on her head. “You are both of you in error,” she said. “Rousseau says that man in a state of nature, such a one as might live alone on these mountaintops, is only a product of his upbringing. Man of himself is neither good nor bad, but only as he is taught. He has neither justice, as we know it, or good taste.”

Byron saluted her with a glass. “Well said, my Mary. You show considerable wit for a female. One might almost be persuaded that the education of women is a good thing.”

Mary cocked an eyebrow. “One might almost be persuaded of the same, of aristocrats.”

Byron guffawed, his hair blowing into his face as he tipped his head back. “Oh, madame, I am undone!”

Shelley chuckled. “Touché, my love. Yet to be serious a moment, do you not agree, Byron, that man in a wild state of Nature, untouched by so-called civilization, is infinitely to be preferred to the over-bred, disconnected man of today's cities and towns?”

Polidori stopped rowing, his black curls plastered to his forehead with sweat. “Oh, poppycock!”

All turned to look at him. “The good doctor has an opinion on philosophy?” Byron's lip curled dangerously.

Polidori glared back at him. “This is nonsense. There is nothing special in Nature. It is a thing to be subdued, a thing to tame. Left alone, your precious Nature will kill us all.” He let go his oars, looking at his reddened palms. He unbuttoned his waistcoat, shrugging it off. “Science is the sworn enemy of Nature and I am a man of Science. Therefore we are allies against your ‘Nature'. We are both devoted to her conquest.”

Shelley's blue eyes widened a bit. “But is not Nature the first ally of the physician?”

Byron laughed bitterly. “Not, apparently, of this physician. Tell us, Polly, how many of your patients survive to this day?”

Polidori flushed. “You are not yet dead, my lord.”

Byron flourished the bottle. “Due to my daily prophylactic,” he said. “I am pickled. I am preserved. My liver and lights will outlive us both by many years.” He poured generously into his glass. Only Mary noticed how his hand trembled.

“Hardly,” said Polidori darkly. “If your lordship's drinking does not pickle his brain as well, his other … endeavors … will surely bring on worse disease.”

Byron's hand froze, his glare locked on Polidori. Claire flushed. “To what do you refer, Doctor?”

Polidori glanced at her, at Mary. He looked away. “I must keep confidence,” he said grimly. “But his lordship's mode of living is … not wise. It could be … injurious. I cannot recommend it.”

Perhaps only Mary caught Claire's low gasp, the half-arrested gesture of protection as her hand darted towards her belly.

“Either row or swim, Polidori, but do not speak again!” Byron growled, his eyes closed.

Polidori's mouth set in a grim line. “Am I never to speak?”

“Oh, come,” Shelley said, ever the peacemaker. “No need for this among friends. We need not argue.”

“Is conversation open only to those whose opinions march with his lordship's?” Polidori sneered.

“Plague take you!” Byron snapped at Polidori.

“Plague, your lordship says? Indeed, does not the plague take the innocent with the just? Where is your sublime Nature then, my lord? When the infant dies at the breast, where is your sublime Nature?”

Unbidden, the image of her dead daughter flashed into Mary's brain. She turned her face away from the others, felt Shelley's hand on her shoulder.

“Doctor!” Shelley said sharply.

“I … I beg your pardon,” stammered Polidori, glancing white-faced at Mary.

“Row, damn you!” growled Byron.

“I will not,” Polidori said defiantly. “The oars roughen my hands, which should remain soft for my examinations. Would you have a calloused surgeon, my lord?”

“Your callouses are elsewhere, whelp,” Byron said. “Mostly on your social graces. Fletcher, take the oars.”

The boat rocked as the big Englishman exchanged places with the doctor. Mary, her eyes closed, rested a hand on her belly. It was empty now, but she remembered her daughter kicking, the quickening of life, a life that had died so quickly, so quietly, despite all her care. Was it a judgement? Perhaps the doctor was right; Nature had taken her child, so how could it be noble?

“Perhaps it is in the nature of Nature to be neutral,” Shelley said. “Man in his original state knew nothing of good or evil. Therefore he had to learn to do evil—”

“Or good,” growled Byron.

“And who taught him?” Claire retorted to Shelley. “Who taught him good from evil?”

“Nature alone,” he responded. “Only Nature knows how to justly proportion to the fault the punishment it deserves, so Nature teaches justice.”

“'Twas Eve,” said Byron mischievously, looking over the rim of his glass at Polidori. “Did she not eat of the apple, and thus bring sex into the world? And if that is not the root of all evil, what is?”

“Pride,” said Polidori dryly.

“Nay, 'tis custom and tyranny alone at the source of evil,” said Shelley with some heat. “Were it not for the custom of the world, that decrees that most men live under the boot heels of others, then were we all equal, in good and evil alike!”

Byron laughed. “But no, we are not so equally disposed, my Shelley. You, perhaps, are all good, and I all evil. Thus are we well balanced, yet neither of us is whole!” He swung the bottle, coming dangerously close to Polidori, who ducked.

“You flatter me,” said Shelley, smiling. “I am not the being you describe.”

“Are you not?” Byron upended the bottle; finding it empty, he flung it over his shoulder to land with a splash in the water. “Are you not, my Shelley? Yet you would teach all mankind your philosophy. You would have us all live in Nature, and reason together,
and eat only vegetables. Come, come, admit it. You would be our newest savior!”

“Our savior, if we need one, will come from just such a background as you describe,” Shelley said seriously. “A natural man, one raised far from cities and the corrupting influence of the world.”

“A saint! I do declare it, a saint and a savior! What think you of that, my Polly?”

“My lord!” protested Polidori.

“Ah, we have offended his Catholic majesty,” sneered Byron. A sudden breeze whipped the waves, and the vessel lurched. Claire and Mary clutched for the gunwales and Byron struggled up to grasp a line.

“Hah!” he cried. “See how the gods reward philosophy! When we drink, when we whore, when we sing, the winds smile upon us. But let us discuss the perfectibility of man, and the storm draws near. Help me tie these sheets, Shiloh!”

Mary watched as the two men, moving almost as one, raised the sails. They expertly caught the wind, and soon Fletcher had shipped the oars while Shelley took the tiller. Pushed by the wind, the boat made good time across the water. The wind was loud enough to suppress further discussion of philosophy, and Mary had to hold her hat onto her head with one hand.

Byron returned to his sulk and his brandy. Claire sat next to him, leaning into his shoulder, her curls whipped by the wind to mingle briefly with his. She curled one hand into his lordship's elbow. Byron said nothing, not protesting, and stared off across the water, drinking.

Over the whistle of the water and the wind, Mary caught a faint melody: Claire was singing softly to Byron. As the boat raced across the lake, Mary sat and wondered what he would say when he learned of Claire's babe.

She feared the worst; Byron was deep in despair and grief over his recent scandal, his separation from his daughter, his self-imposed exile from England.

He will reject her, thought Mary. His own babe, and the woman who bears it. Perhaps Polidori is right: he is a monster.

… the strange system of human society was explained to me. I heard of the division of property, of immense wealth and squalid poverty; of rank, descent, and noble blood.

—Frankenstein,
Volume III,
Chapter V

S
helley handed
Mary over the gunwale onto the dock, then turned and held out a hand for Claire. “Come, child,” he said. But Claire hung back, looking to Byron, obviously hoping he would be her escort. Byron ignored her, climbing out with a clumsy, lurching movement that set the boat rocking. Claire stumbled, righted herself, and finally accepted Shelley's hand up.

“Where shall we start?” inquired Byron, shrugging himself into his blue coat. “The tailor? The wine seller?”

“The chandler's,” said Mary firmly. “We are running low on candles.”

Shelley grinned down at her. “Because we sit up until dawn every night?”

“But how else?” Byron said. “We are creatures of darkness, it is affirmed on every side, is't not, Polidori?”

The doctor, climbing out of the boat by himself, scowled. “'Tis said of yourself, certes.”

Byron snarled and started off up the slope of the cobbled street towards the city gate, his lameness offset by the cane he carried. Claire hurried after him and, catching up, slipped her hand through his arm. His only reaction was a slightly stiffer back. Mary took Shelley's arm and they started up the hill.

“I have been thinking, my love,” said Shelley. “Poor Fanny is left alone in England, without our company or our conversation. May we not remember your sister with some small gift?”

“A generous thought,” Mary said. “But there is the matter of the candles, and the new sheets for our bed, and William needs a new shirt. I had hoped to visit a fabric seller's—”

“What? You will not even give passing glance to a book store?” cried her lover. He grinned down at her. “I know you need more ink, and I a new pen knife. We must stop at a bookseller's.”

Mary smiled, but it was a thin, tight smile. She didn't want to go into a bookstore. It would remind her too much of Skinner Street, and her father's distant smile, and her step-mother's harried contempt. Mrs. Godwin had once fancied herself on the lower rungs of society; now she waited behind a counter on women who had once invited her to tea, and knew herself to be beneath their state. Even Mary, raised on egalitarian principles, had felt her self-loathing and contempt, so that the very air of the bookstore had been bitter and poisonous. She had no desire to remember it in any further detail. Still, it was useless to argue with Shelley.

Polidori puffed up the street behind them. “His lordship said he was looking for a new watch today,” he offered. “A shop in the Rue de Rive caught his eye two days ago. It had a handsome astrolabe in the front window, and a fine collection of timepieces.”

“I declare I do not know why Albé needs a timepiece,” Mary murmured to Shelley. “He gets up after noon, goes where he pleases when he pleases, and dines at his own hour. Indeed, he has no use for anyone else's time but his own, so what schedule need he keep?”

Shelley only chuckled and patted her hand. He looked over her head at Polidori. “An astrolabe, you say?”

It was not far from the jetty where they had tied the boat (with a generous tip to the guard, to see that it was there when they returned), to the lower part of the city proper. They walked up the gentle slope of the cobbled lane, with huge warehouses lining the way. Passing them, their high walls shut out the sun, and a chill passed over Mary. She wondered again where her shawl had disappeared to, and calculated the cost of a new one. She felt sad, knowing that the finest shawl in the world could not match the value of her lost mother's only physical legacy to her. She and Fanny had shared it, and now she had lost it, and Mary wondered if Fanny would ever forgive her.

Shrill cries met their ears as they emerged into a common plaza. Street vendors hawking sausages on a stick, beer and bread converged on the party as they left the narrow street. Shelley laughed to see them, the joy of life that always bubbled just under the surface of him freed by the attentions of the peddlers. Ahead, Mary saw Claire tugging Byron towards a dressmaker's, and flushed. Was Claire really going to dun her lover for clothes, like a common mistress? Was Claire really so ignorant of how Byron would regard this? She pulled at Shelley. “Come, let us catch up to them.”

Shelley, tossing a coin to a vendor, bit into an apple absently and nodded his agreement. They pushed their way through a crowd hot with bargaining shoppers, dodged a horse-drawn cart full of cabbages lurching through the square, and emerged onto the paved sidewalk before a row of shops. Claire and Byron stood side by side, not touching, looking in the window. Mary and Shelley stopped beside them.

“Just a small one,” Claire was saying. She pointed to a golden locket in the front of the display. “Only large enough to keep a lock of your hair in, B.”

Byron shifted from foot to foot, looking uncomfortable. “'Tis an awfully vulgar design, sweet.”

Mary felt her face go hot again. Was Claire really begging for trinkets, like some prostitute? “Claire,” she hissed, and grabbed her arm. “May I speak to you?”

Claire stepped away with her, and Byron took the opportunity to duck into the shop. Polidori followed him, but Shelley stayed looking in the window, musing. Mary pulled her step-sister into a doorway. “Must you be so common?” she whispered fiercely. “To ask Albé for a locket, it's as if you were a … a woman of the street.”