Outcasts (2 page)

Her son squirmed in her arms and she looked down. At six months, William was as fair as his mother and had his father's lambent blue eyes. He grunted, gasped, and then gave out a wail, pushing at her breast with one small hand.

“Is he finished?”

Mary turned. Her step-sister, Claire Clairmont, a few months older than she, lounged across a daybed paging through an old book. She glanced up, her dark eyes half-shut with boredom. “I wish Albé had let me go with them,” she said.

How odd, thought Mary. In the last few weeks, since meeting the famous poet, they had moved from the formal “Lord Byron” to the use of his initials “LB” to the pseudo-Italianate pun on his initials, “Albé”. Mary adjusted her dress and put William on her shoulder, patting him gently. “I do not wonder at Byron's
reluctance to go anywhere with you, after the scene at dinner the other day.”

Claire flipped a page so forcefully she nearly tore it. “It is his fault. He treats me like a child.”

William burped gently but continued to fuss. “I think my milk may be drying up,” Mary said. “I don't know if I should hire a wet nurse or wean him.”

Completely uninterested, Claire sighed and turned another page. “All I wanted to do was discuss poetry with him. A perfectly normal conversation between two persons who love one another. Yet he laughed at me, in front of Shelley! And that odious Polidori laughed with him.”

“Dr. Polidori always echoes Lord Byron's sentiments,” Mary said, wiping her son's face. She turned him around into the crook of her arm and stepped close to the wall. The wallpaper displayed a pattern of pink roses on an ivory background. “Look, Will-mouse! Aren't the roses pretty?” She turned to look over her shoulder at her sister. “Polly can hardly do otherwise, my dear. He is, after all, merely a paid employee.”

Claire snorted. “In the pay of two masters, no less. Did you know that Murray offered him five hundred pounds to keep a journal of his travels with Albé?” Her hand toyed with a pale green ribbon decorating her yellow sprigged muslin day dress.

Mary smiled. “Absurd. John Murray is far too conventional a publisher to actually print the escapades of our dear LB.” She frowned. “Is Polly planning to write about you and Byron?”

Claire shrugged. “I care nothing for what John Polidori writes. Oh, look! Mary, do you remember this?” She turned the book towards Mary, holding it up to show her the illustration. In stark black and white, the image showed two small children lying flat in a bed, with their eyes closed and their arms straight out on either side of their bodies. A high window admitted a sickly yellow light, which fell on the immensely tall figure standing over the bed, looking down at the occupants with a crazed, fearful expression. Its hands were clenched in fists, thrust straight down in front of its body in an attitude of agonized anxiety; the dark shadows in
its tousled hair looked almost like devil's horns. Its gaze was fixed on the occupants of the bed, oblivious to the small dog jumping at its side.

“That's my mother's book,” Mary said.

Claire nodded, closing the book to show the title:
Original Stories for Children
, by Mary Wollstonecraft. “Mr. William Blake is a master of the macabre image, don't you think? Do you remember when that picture used to give us the horrors?”

Mary patted her son again. “I remember that it gave you the horrors.”

Her step-sister sniffed. “No need to act so superior, as if you never got them.”

“But I don't. I never have.”

Claire shuddered. “And you are fortunate. To be visited by those deathly visions, to feel the breath of monsters on your face, to writhe in agony—”

“Nonsense,” Mary said sharply. “'Tis only your own imagination, as I have told you often. Sister, you really must resort to reason. These imaginings are best left in the schoolroom or nursery.”

“You have no feeling!” Claire said. “Truly, Sister, I do not know how you can support a life based on so … dry an outlook! At least I have an imagination!”

“Yes, a very melodramatic one.” Annoyed, Mary sat down in her armchair near the window, spreading her white dress around her. She placed William in his cradle beside her chair and began to rock him.

Claire stood and strode to the window, placing a hand on one of the gold curtains. Without turning, she spoke. “Mary, I must tell you. I … I am
enciente
.”

“Jane, you know I don't speak French well. What do you mean?”

“My name is Claire! Why can you not remember?”

Preoccupied with William, Mary said, “I called you Jane for sixteen years! Last year you were Clary. Now you are Claire. What will you be called next week? In any case, I do not quite take your meaning. Did you say you were …
ennuye
? Bored? The
new edition of
Galignani's Messenger
is downstairs—”

“I am with child.” Claire's tone was firm, but Mary saw that her hand on the curtain trembled.

Mary took a deep breath. Part of her was shocked—and yet part of her was not. “Surely you are mistaken, my dear! Perhaps you are only late? Or the exertions of our travels—”

“I have missed my courses.” Claire's voice wavered a little, but she continued to stare out at the Lake where her lover's boat bobbed, somewhere in the mist.

Mary gripped the cradle hard with one hand, a deep foreboding creeping over her. “By a week, at most—”

“This is the third month I have done so.” Claire turned and looked steadily at her step-sister. Her olive skin flushed as she met Mary's eyes, and she glanced away.

“The third? How is this possible, Claire? You have only been sleeping with Lord Byron for three weeks!” Mary felt her skin grow cold. “Unless … not that I am jealous or any such nonsense, or with any idea of exclusivity, still, can it be you have been sleeping with … with Shelley?”

Claire half-smiled and turned away. “Well, it would be within our philosophy, would it not, dear Mary? But no, I must say that Byron and I first … embraced in London.”

“In London?” Mary was stunned. “You … when you brought me to meet him … you had already …” Her hands fell to her lap and twined together. “You had already been with him.”

“Not yet,” Claire said candidly. “Not just then. But thereafter, yes.”

Mary stared, seeing that rainy day in London three months before, the elegant salon in Picadilly Square, Byron emerging from the shadows with his halting gait and his impish grin, taking her hand. “You used me.” Her voice sounded flat, unlike the roiling in her head, the anger rising in her stomach. “You used me, your own sister.”

Claire made an impatient gesture. “Is not utility the basis for all conduct? Of course it was no harm to you if he wanted to meet the famous daughter of the famous Mary Wollstonecraft and the
famous William Godwin.” Her voice held an edge. “Naturally, I expect you will fall in love with Byron, too. Have you not already?”

Mary reached for the shawl draped over the arm of her chair and gathered it into her lap. “In love with Byron? No, of course not. He is not … not to my taste.” She drew the white wool over her shoulders, seeking calm, trying to focus beyond her shock.

Claire tossed her mane of dark curls. “Well, I am not exclusive, even if you are. Despite your claims of freedom in love, you cling to Shelley like ivy to a wall. Whereas I am happy to share, in freedom and love!”

She used me.
“You know I have never traded on my mother's name.”

“No, of course not. No need to, when the very mention of it engages the attention of the most famous poet in England!”

“Jane—Claire, I protest. Was there no other way to win his love, but by bartering my name? My mother's name? I must declare I think this badly done.”

“Badly done? Badly done? Are you now turning hypocrite on me, condemning me for what you did yourself?” Claire sneered.

Mary felt sick at the thought of a scene with Claire. She hated melodrama. “No, I—”

Claire's hands balled into fists at her side. “You cannot deny that Shelley wanted to meet you for the sake of your famous name. You will not deny that you traded on that, used it to attract him!”

Mary's eyes flashed angrily, but she forced her voice to remain calm. “Not at all, as you know. He came to meet Godwin, not me.”

“Bad enough that our father has cut off all contact with us because you needs must elope with Shelley. Bad enough we have been harried throughout England, out of England, by Shelley's debts. Bad enough that I am made to feel like an extra arm or leg, useless and in the way. But now when I have found love, you condemn me? You?” She cast the book into Mary's lap. “There. Take your sainted mother's book, your sainted mother who bore your sister Fanny out of wedlock and married Godwin against her own
philosophy! I am sick of hearing about her high-mindedness, and from you of all people!”

“Claire, what are you saying?”

“Nothing but the truth, I declare! Your mother went chasing after a famous philosopher, to make her name even greater. You have captured the greatest radical philosopher of the day, Percy Shelley. Yet when I lie down with a mere poet, you scorn me!”

Mary gasped. “No, you misunderstand! He does not love you, Claire! I only wish you happy—”

“You wish me at the devil, don't deny it! You are merely jealous, because my lover is more famous than yours. And some day, our child will be more famous than yours! You and Shelley have your William, Byron and I will have our son, and we shall see who is the more influential.”

Aghast, Mary said, “I hardly know where to begin to disabuse you, Claire! You know that has never been our intent. You know jealousy plays no part in our—”

“Fiddle!” Claire said. “You see only what you want to see.”

Mary bit back the reply, that in fact it was Claire who blinded herself to reality. In the end she only said, “But Lord Byron does not love you, Claire! I am persuaded of it! He will not support you, or the child. What will you do?”

“You are wrong,” Claire said smugly. “Do not forget, he traveled all the way from England to be with me.”

Mary balled her fists in her lap, willing herself not to give way to temper. “This trip to Geneva was your idea, Sister. At your insistence, we came to Lake Leman. It strikes me that rather, you have traveled all the way from England to be with him.”

But where were my friends and relations? No father had watched my infant days, no mother had blessed me with smiles and caresses; or if they had, all my past life was now a blot, a blind vacancy in which I distinguished nothing.

—Frankenstein,
Volume II,
Chapter IV

M
ary didn't particularly like this room of the Maison Chapuis, but it would have to do. Facing north, it endured every draught of cold air this unseasonable weather offered. But it also caught the afternoon sun—when there was sun—which warmed the clammy room somewhat. Mary and Claire had done what they could with it. The sky blue love seat and matching chairs had been cleaned, the sideboard polished, and the curtains beaten free of as much dust as possible. But the homely look of the worn parquet, the black marks along the wainscoting from mildew stains, and the general air of shabbiness always embarrassed her. Still, it was really the only room in which they could decently receive visitors, so she made it her afternoon retreat. She sat now on this particular rainy afternoon with her embroidery in her lap, watching the water run down the panes of glass. The pallid light sloping in through the windows looked weak and ineffectual, distorted as if in a dream.

A door slamming, the sound of boots on the wooden stairs, and then Shelley calling her name. Mary turned eagerly to the door just as it burst open, and her tall, wild-haired lover strode into the room. At five feet eleven, he was above average height, slender and strong. His light brown hair fell in waves across his pale complexion, highlighting his large, vivid blue eyes. His muddy boots tracked dirt across the floor, his breeches dripped with lake water, and his waistcoat was buttoned awry, but his face shone with happiness and animation. Reaching for her hands, he exclaimed, “I missed you!” He caught her hands and kissed them, one after the other.

Behind him, Lord Byron limped into the room, a scowl on his handsome face, his dark curls falling over his forehead. At five foot eight inches, he was shorter than Shelley, but his frame was more compact, even a trifle pudgy. His normally pale complexion flushed as he turned to his companion. “Damn those stairs! Polly, see if there's any brandy in this house!” His greatcoat flared around him like a cape as he shrugged it off, looked around for someone to hand it to and, finding no servant waiting to take it, tossed it over the arm of a chair.

Last into the room was John Polidori, a young, darkly handsome man of neat appearance and large, speaking eyes. Also shorter than Shelley, he was tall enough that his close-fitted pantaloons showed off a fine leg. Altogether, Mary thought, he was a fine, dark-eyed man. Right now those eyes flashed at his patron. “I am not the butler, my lord,” he said peevishly. “Indeed, I am not perfectly sure whether Mr. Shelley employs one.” His cravat had lost its starch, and was drooping woefully under his dark coat.

“Oh, pay Byron no mind,” Shelley said. He cast himself onto the love-seat and stretched his legs out before him. “Mary, can you get us some brandy? Or tea?”

Before she could answer, Claire bounced into the room from the opposite doorway, her hands full of lace. “Oh, Mary, look! These would—oh, hello!” Her manner was as artificial as it was bright.

Byron flinched slightly, turned away, and began re-arranging some bibelots on the mantle. “Never mind the brandy,” he muttered. “Perhaps some mulled hemlock?”

Polidori reached into his coat pocket and drew forth some letters. “When we called for the post, we brought away a copy of Mr. Leigh Hunt's
Examiner
,” he said. “He has reviewed Coleridge's
Christabel
.”