Outcasts (17 page)

“It struck me … eleven days. Do you know, that is exactly the length of time my mother lived, after I was born?” She adjusted William's wrap. “I am bracketed by death, Doctor,” she said bitterly. “My mother lived eleven days, my daughter lived eleven days. Perhaps I have inherited the touch of the Death Angel. I fear that everything, everyone I love will die.” She looked down at William. So perfect. So precious. Tears formed in her eyes. “Compared to the touch of death, what is a club foot?” she whispered. “Can such a thing be inherited?”

Polidori shook his head. “I do not believe in a ‘touch of death'. As to the club foot, however, there is room for doubt.”

Unbidden, an image of Claire entwined with Byron, his long hair in his eyes, his lazy smile, his strong arms around Claire came into Mary's mind. She thought of Claire carrying Byron's child, of what their child might look like. “Then is it your medical opinion that such things as his lordship's foot can be … inherited?”

Polidori was silent, looking out over the water. “Pardon me, Mrs. Shelley, but I suspect you have a more than intellectual interest in the question.”

Mary looked down at her son, and adjusted her skirts. “Of course, I do not wish to invade his lordship's privacy—”

“Miss Clairmont is with child by Lord Byron.” He stated it as a fact, not a question, still not looking at Mary.

Mary cleared her throat. “She has not told him. I pray you will respect her wishes.”

He nodded. “I guessed it. Her volatility, the flush on her cheeks. And this morning, when I rose, she was in Byron's bedroom, vomiting. I believe the midwives call it ‘morning sickness'.”

“Has Byron guessed?”

Polidori laughed shortly and turned to meet her look. “By no means. She could doubtless give birth in front of him and he would be none the wiser. His lordship looks seldom beyond his own interests.”

Mary took a deep breath. “Do you think her child might inherit Byron's deformity?”

“Possibly. But I doubt it. And even if it was born so, there are modern remedies. His lordship was born with his foot turned under, and he received no competent medical attention as a boy. As a result, he was teased and tormented about it. Now he hides it in shame, as though it were some kind of punishment.”

“Is there nothing that can be done?”

“Not now. As an infant, certainly. Hippocrates himself describes a treatment that might have worked: repeated manipulation, bandaging, and overcorrection. Had his lordship been treated when the limb was young and pliable …” He shrugged. “Now, I doubt there is any remedy.”

“His father and mother did not care enough to seek proper help for him?”

Polidori shrugged. “He saw very little of his father, who abandoned him as a child. His lordship says there were doctors.” He made a face. “Quacks and charlatans, as near as I can tell.”

Mary thought about Byron, his beautiful face, his straight back, his excellent form when riding. She thought of his halting step, how slowly he climbed hills and stairs. “I wonder if he has ever had the joy of running,” she murmured.

Polidori toyed with a pot of blue flowers on a pedestal beside him. “No, but ask him about his swim across the Hellespont, a few years ago.” He brushed at a fly buzzing in front of his face, and squinted as the sun suddenly broke through the clouds. “He even swims in pantaloons, to keep his foot hidden.”

Mary looked down as she patted her son. “Albé has a daughter in England. I only wondered if she was similarly … afflicted … and whether he had arranged for, as you say, competent treatment.”

Polidori stroked his chin. “I think if she had been born with her father's disfigurement, he would have mentioned it.”

“Or perhaps not,” Mary said. “He is very proud.”

“Oh, proud, yes. The very pride of Lucifer himself.” A bitter smile twisted Polidori's handsome face. “Pray that it does not presage a fall.”

Mary shifted William to her other shoulder. “Still, it is ironic, do you not think? That a man widely considered the most beautiful man in Europe thinks of himself as a monster.”

Polidori poked a toe at some grass growing between the cracks of the pavement. “Beautiful on the outside, but not on the inside.”

“Would it be preferable, do you think, to be born beautiful on the inside and ugly on the outside?” she asked.

Polidori shrugged. “Surely virtue outweighs mere physical appearance, in the larger scheme of things.”

Mary looked askance at the young man. “You cannot mean that, Doctor. Come, let us be rational. Look around you. The most shocking debaucher on the Continent can do nearly as he pleases,
merely because he has a title and the face of an angel. Yet there may be an actual angel, perhaps in some village here, who looks like a devil and is treated as such. Do you really think the world is perceptive enough to look past the surface?”

Polidori coughed. Clearly he wanted to disagree, but was too polite to do so. “Perhaps it is as you say,” he said. “In any event, his lordship will act according to his will, and never according to the dictates of the world. To some, so I perceive, that makes him a monster.”

I took the boat, and passed many hours upon the water. Sometimes, with my sails set, I was carried by the wind; and sometimes, after rowing into the middle of the lake, I left the boat to pursue its own course, and gave way to my own miserable reflections. I was often tempted, when all was at peace around me, and I the only unquiet thing that wandered restless in a scene so beautiful and heavenly.

—Frankenstein,
Volume II,
Chapter X

T
he sun
was playing hide-and-seek behind the clouds when Mary, Claire and Shelley climbed into the little sailboat. Byron was already aboard, restless and abrupt. Claire leaned over him, presenting her cheek for a kiss, but Byron turned his head. “Sit down and don't rock us all into the lake,” he said.

Shelley helped Mary into the boat. “Don't worry,” he whispered into her ear. “It's a fair day for a sail. Nothing to worry about.”

The first time Shelley had persuaded her to sail in a boat, Mary had been deathly afraid. Remembering the terrible seasickness that gripped her every time she sailed, she had braced herself for a horrible experience. To her delight, however, the calm surface of the lake had held no such terrors in store, and now she was able to relax and enjoy the soft lapping of the waves against the side of the boat.

Byron's servant Fletcher handed in a basket that clinked glassily, then clambered in and threw off the tie.

John Polidori was already in the boat, manning the oars. Despite the cooling breeze, his forehead was shiny with sweat already. As soon as Mary was seated, he pushed off from shore. “Mayhap we can raise the sail?” he muttered to his lordship.

Byron lay against a gunwale, head back, eyes closed, soaking in what sunlight flittered through the clouds. “Quiet, Polly,” he said. “I shall raise my mast when I am ready.”

Polidori snorted and leaned into the oars.

Shelley had not sat down, but leaned against the mast, looking out over the water. The sun broke through the clouds for a moment, and he raised his face to it and sang:

Oh! had we some bright little isle of our own,

In a blue summer ocean, far off and alone,

Where a leaf never dies in the still blooming bowers,

And the bee banquets on through a whole year of flowers;

Claire, who had been sulking in the stern near Polidori, looked up and smiled. In her lovely soprano, she joined him in the next verse of Thomas Moore's song:

Where the sun loves to pause

With so fond a delay,

That the night only draws

A thin veil o'er the day;

Byron opened his eyes, squinted, grunted, and hauled himself up into a sitting position. He reached under a blanket and brought out a bottle of brandy. Pulling the cork with his teeth, he took a long draught of it.

Shelley and Claire, singing together, continued the song:

There with souls ever ardent and pure as the clime,

We should love, as they loved in the first golden time;

The glow of the sunshine, the balm of the air,

Would steal to our hearts, and make all summer there.

Mary, watching Shelley smile fondly down at Claire, who laughed and sang at him, felt a pang go through her. She looked away from the happy pair and found herself caught in Byron's gaze. For a moment, his guard down, she saw rage and anger and sorrow mixed in his face, saw the despair he hid behind brandy and sarcasm and irony. He held her look, and a chill passed over her, and a wave of sadness. Then his mouth turned up in a sardonic
smile, he raised the brandy bottle in a toast to her, and muttered,

Still must my song my thoughts, my soul betray:

Still must each accent to my bosom suit,

My heart unhush'd—although my lips were mute!

He turned away, staring past Shelley to the far shore, where the mountains loomed over Geneva in dark majesty. Mary lifted a hand to touch his, halted, and drew back. Byron seemed somehow remote, closed in, as if wrapped in a cloak of isolation. Mary wondered if he was thinking about his wife back in London, his little daughter. She had inwardly scorned him for abandoning them, but now, seeing the naked grief in his eyes, she wondered if she had misjudged him.

Claire and Shelley finished their song, and Claire clapped. Her mood more buoyant now, she stood and picked her way over to Byron. He ignored her as she settled in next to her. Mary scooted closer to where Shelley still leaned against the mast, peering ahead. She reached up and took his hand. Absently, he squeezed it, glanced down at her, smiled, and looked off across the water again.

She closed her eyes against the sun, settled herself against Shelley's knees, and allowed herself to drift into a half-sleep. With William safe at home in Elise's care, she had no other thought than to spend a morning with her beloved. She felt Shelley's fingers winding absently in her hair; over her head he spoke to Byron.

“… the lairs of dragons,” Byron was saying. “Until Wordsworth, anyway. Yet even Wordsworth cannot aspire to mountains such as these.”

“No,” Shelley agreed. “I do not think there are any mountains, anywhere, that can compare to Mont Blanc. Or Jura, master of thunder. But then, you have surely seen greater mountains, Byron. What about Albania? Greece? Have you not gazed upon Olympus himself?”

A grunt from the middle of the craft, where Polidori pulled at the oars. Mary felt sunshine on her face and knew the craft had turned in the wind.

“Olympus! Well enough, I suppose, as mountains go. But not at all in the line of the Alps,” Byron said lazily.

“These heights take away the breath,” Shelley said. “Indeed, they take away my sight. I cannot believe what I see. How can mere men climb such ramparts?”

“'Tis easy enough,” Polidori puffed. “Put one foot in front of the other, so I am told.”

“Peace, fribble,” said Byron. “And steer a bit to port—that's to the left. We're going to miss the docks otherwise.”

“You might lend a hand,” said the doctor. No one answered him.

Shelley turned and sat, shielding Mary from the sun.

“I wonder what it would be like to stand on the very top of Jura,” came Claire's voice.

Mary shifted, turning her face away from the warmth of the sun. Without asking, Shelley lightly set her hat on his knee so that the brim shaded her face. Opening her eyes, she looked up and saw him smiling down at her.

“I think it would be windy,” said Byron.

“But sublime,” said Shelley. “Imagine the sweep of Nature below, the works of man made so tiny by distance.”

“As they should be,” murmured Mary. Her gaze took in the opposite shore, where verdant mountains plunged steeply almost to the edge of the lake, as though they had been tumbling into the water in some distant era, and been frozen in mid-motion.

“Why so?” said Polidori. Mary heard the creak of the oarlocks, felt the puff of cool breeze on her face. She glanced at Byron, who lounged against the gunwale, brandy glass in hand, surveying her with his usual sardonic look of amusement.

“The works of men are the work of the mind and the hand,” she replied. She closed her eyes, feeling the breeze on her skin. “Nature is the realm of feeling and art, the kingdom of the heart. Only in her bosom can we find real truth, real beauty, not covered up and distorted by human minds.”

Shelley clapped his hands together. “Hear, hear, darling Mary!”

“Amen,” said Byron. Mary heard the clink of glass, the gurgle of liquid. Even on the other side of the boat, she could smell the brandy. “Here's to great nature and her bosom!”

Claire sat up suddenly, her dark curls dancing around her face. Her eyes lit with mischief. “Oh, but you have stood atop Jura!” she said to Byron, then: “He who ascends to mountain-tops—”

Byron scowled. “Be silent, wench! I did not give you leave to quote me.”

“No, you did not,” she giggled, squirming out of reach. She grinned at Mary. “He gave me those lines to copy out, two nights ago. I have them by heart already:”

He who ascends to mountain-tops, shall find

The loftiest peaks most wrapt in clouds and snow;

He who surpasses or subdues mankind,

Must look down on the hate of those below.''

Is it not a perfect description?

Byron was not pleased; Mary saw the way his mouth made a taut line, the way his fist tightened on the glass. He said nothing, looking away, his chin thrust outward in sullen resentment.

“Most excellent,” Shelley said, oblivious to his friend's discontent. “Is that a new addition to
Childe Harold?
”