Outcasts (23 page)

“You did it in response to Albé's taunt,” she said strongly. “Why do you allow him to goad you thusly?”

His laugh was short and bitter. “Patronage, my dear ma'am. Patronage. The curse of the educated and unemployed.” He removed his arm and looked at her out of unhappy eyes. “Do you know, I am the youngest person ever to receive a medical degree from Edinburgh medical school? I have published poetry. I have written a play. And yet his lordship considers me a secretary.” He spat the last word.

“Claire tells me that the publisher Murray has paid you to write about Lord Byron. Have you considered that he may find this objectionable?” She wrung out a cloth in the cold water.

He was silent a moment. “How else am I to live? His lordship promises, but does not pay, like all the aristocracy. And then he taunts me about—”

“About me,” she finished for him.

His eyes met hers, full of pain, and then he looked away. “About everything. I am the butt of every joke.”

“And you endure it.”

“I must. Do you know what the patronage of the author of
Childe Harold
is worth? I hope to get Murray to publish my play, if he likes my notes on Lord Byron.”

Mary nodded, understanding very well the difficulties of publishing. “And of course, you are aware that Byron is one of the directors of the Drury Lane Theatre. He can get your play onto the bill.”

Polidori shrugged. “I misdoubt it. He has not even read it.”

Mary saw sweat on his jaw and wished she had something to ease his pain. “Tonight I will ask him to read it after our meal.”

Polidori turned his head, eyes wide. “You would do that? If you ask him, he will surely not refuse!”

She smiled and adjusted his pillow. “You think too highly of my influence on him.”

Polidori grasped her hand in his. “Oh, Mrs. Shelley, dear ma'am! This is worth all the pain in my ankle, if you will get him to consider it!”

Mary withdrew her hand but cocked her head. “You say you earned a medical degree only last year, yet you are more anxious to have your play produced. Are you dissatisfied with medicine?”

Polidori shook his head. “Not at all, but my father, he is a translator of Italian works, a literary man. I would have him bear some pride in me, some appreciation of the works of my hand.”

Mary's mouth twisted. “I know that feeling right well, Doctor!” She rose to her feet. “Try to rest this afternoon, and I will speak to Shelley.”

Polidori granted her an earnest look. “I cannot be more in your debt, ma'am!”

“Gratitude is a useless emotion,” she said, but smiled. Seeing Fletcher enter with another bowl of cold water, she nodded to him and went out through the French doors.

I took every precaution to defend my person in case the fiend should openly attack me. I carried pistols and a dagger constantly about me, and was ever on the watch….

—Frankenstein,
Volume III,
Chapter V

B
yron's servant,
Berger, had brought the pistols and loading table down from the balcony onto the lawn. There, Mary found Shelley and Byron preparing to shoot again.

Shelley saw her, turned, smiled, and went back to loading his pistol. His hand was black with gunpowder. “My Maisie-girl is as quiet as a little dormouse. I like her that way.”

Byron grinned, and Mary had to admit that, in the sunlight with his tousled hair falling over his wide brow, Byron was an enormously attractive man. “A quiet woman. What a concept! Would that I knew one.” He raised his arm, holding a loaded pistol, and sighted at the wall at the bottom of the lawn, just above the water's edge.

Crack!

A wine bottle disappeared in a puff of vaporized glass.

“Oh, well done,” Shelley said. “That's five for you, and eight for me.”

“It most certainly is not, my Shiloh. That's seven for me. I am almost even with you.”

Shelley chuckled and stepped forward to take Byron's place at the head of the lawn, a pistol in each hand. “Come now, be fair, my lord. You cannot count the one that fell over when you nicked the wall under it. Nor can you count the one that knocked its neighbor over. That's not quite the same as shooting it. “

“It's dead, nonetheless,” Byron said. He handed his pistol to Berger to load and picked up a half-full wineglass. “Madame Mary, how is our good doctor?”

“Well enough. You should not have teased him as you did.”

Byron shrugged and knocked back his wine.

Shelley peered over his shoulder. “These are very fine Mantons,” he said, admiring the pistols. Looking back to the targets, he squeezed off another shot. One more bottle shattered.

“I protest!” Byron said, laughing. “Come, Shelley! You are destroying my wine bottles faster than I can empty them! Berger, fetch another bottle of the '95 claret.”

“Wine will not improve your aim,” Shelley said evenly. Sighting down the barrel of the other pistol, he squeezed off a shot. Another wine bottle vanished in a tinkling rain of glass as the the echo of the shot rebounded across the water. “Really, these are too easy. We need a challenge.”

Byron placed a chair for Mary, and she lowered herself into it with a sigh. “Are you certain you will take nothing? The day is damnably oppressive. Some ratafia, perhaps? Berger! Damn your eyes, bring us something cold and wet!”

One of Byron's peacocks strutted slowly out of the hedge-copse on their right. Shelley's pistol tracked it unerringly. “What say you, my lord?” he said playfully. “Shall we have peacock for dinner?” The flintlock snicked back and Shelley extended his arm.

“Nonsense,” Byron said lazily. “You do not eat meat, so do not try to convince me that you will kill that bird:”

Never again may blood of bird or beast

Stain with its venomous stream a human feast.

Shelley laughed, and Byron raised an eyebrow. “You did not think I had read
Queen Mab?
Shelley, Shelley, you underestimate me. But you will not shoot my bird.”

“Perhaps it is a monarchist,” Mary said. “Shelley, would you shoot a monarchist?”

“Assuredly,” he said. “Byron, do stand next to the bird. I can rid the world of two overdressed creatures at once.”

“Have you ever fired at a man?” Byron asked.

Berger arrived with a tray, bearing claret, lemonade and gunpowder. Mary accepted a glass of ratafia with a smile. It smelled of
cinnamon and peaches.

“I have,” Shelley said, lowering the empty pistols and turning back to the group.

“Only when he has been fired upon,” Mary said, sipping her drink. The sugary, fiery punch made her eyes water.

Byron raised an eyebrow and his glass. “Well, damn me,” he said. “A jealous husband? A jilted lover, perhaps?”

Shelley glanced up, his look cool as he reached for the gunpowder bag. “A government agent.”

Byron cocked his head to one side. “A vice and morals committee? Were you arrested for not going to church?”

“I was fired upon in my home,” Shelley said calmly. “On a night in February. I heard someone in the house, and went to look.”

“Forsaking your pistols?” Byron said archly.

“By no means. I had one with me. I saw someone at the window, and a shot was fired through it. I attempted to return fire, but the powder flashed in the pan. The fiend entered through the window and beat me nearly senseless.” Having finished, Shelley fired.

Crack! A twig fell from a high branch.

Byron scowled. “You alerted the authorities? It's a damned thing, when a gentleman is attacked in his own house.”

“It was not my house,” Shelley said, reaching for a cloth. “I had rented a cottage in Wales.”

Byron looked at Mary. “And you, were you not frightened?”

“I was not there,” she said calmly. “I had not yet met Shelley.”

“Did they catch the fellow?”

“No, although I gave them a drawing of the fiend,” Shelley said. “And it was a fiend, I am persuaded. A demon from another region.”

Byron stared. “You can jest about this?”

“Shelley thinks it was a demon, but I suspect a more worldly assailant,” Mary said. “Shelley was engaged in a political war between landowners and sheep men.”

“Well, it's damnable,” Byron snorted. “People are mad, I tell you. I am followed day and night, and stared at wherever I go. One grows accustomed, or stays indoors.”

Mary shook her head. “Oh, but it is not the same, Albé. You are a notorious rake, someone to condemn with a smile. You threaten aristocrats in their drawing rooms. My Shelley attacks the world at its roots: politics and religion. Men have been guillotined for less.”

Berger, who had been loading a pistol, handed it to Byron. He took it absently, pointing it skyward. “So that is why you travel armed, Shelley. I had wondered.”

Shelley had finished loading and picked up the pistols. “Never with fewer than three pair,” he said. “We have killed all the wine bottles,” he said practically. “What shall we culp next?”

“A card? No, we will need all of them later. Perhaps a portrait we do not like? Fletcher, go get that hideous thing over the study fireplace and bring it out here.”

Shelley shook his head. “No, too large. How say you to a gold piece? Affix one to yonder tree trunk, and we will see who can come closest to it.”

Byron brightened. “Excellent. I used to practice thus at Manton's shooting gallery. But I have not a shilling. Mary? Can you accommodate us?”

Mary felt her cheeks grow warm with embarrassment. Their funds were too low to waste a sixpence, let alone a shilling, on sport. “I fear that I left my reticule at home,” she said quietly.

Byron reached into his waistcoat. “See here if I have—yes! My purse. Capital! We shall shoot at this half crown!” He held up the round gold coin.

Mary gulped. A half crown would buy food, clothes, and candles for a week. She felt a trickle of annoyance. She heard her father's voice in her head: Money belongs to those who need it. The principle of utilitarianism was sound, and her lifelong belief in it now rebelled at this waste of good money. She stood suddenly, tugging at her sleeve. “Here. Use this.” She held out her handkerchief.

Byron looked at her in surprise. “Your handkerchief? What gentleman would shoot at a lady's pocket square? Really, we are not barbarians!”

She waved it at him impatiently. “Truly, it is of less worth than that half crown, my lord. And the money may be put to better use.”

She glanced at Shelley, but he was staring out over the lawn at the lake, thinking. She knew he could not hear them.

A sardonic smile curled in the corner of Byron's mouth. “And what better use can money be put to, than to entertain us? But if you wish it, it will be so. Allow me to purchase your linen, Madame Mary.” With a flourish and a bow, Byron handed her the coin and took the handkerchief.

Heat flooded Mary's cheeks. “No, you do not understand. I did not mean, that is, it was not my intent—”

Byron chuckled and waved the white square. “Too late, my dear. Too late. And now for our target …” He tucked the handkerchief into his sleeve and drew forth a sixpence from his pocket. “Ah, a lesser coin. This will do nicely. Fletcher, set it against that lower limb on the birch yonder.” The servant moved off with the coin winking in his hand.

Mary's embarrassed flush now turned to anger. “I meant for you not to waste coin. You mock me, my lord.” Her voice shook a little.

Byron burst into laughter. “Waste coin? My good Mary, I have wasted vast oceans of them. Oceans, rivers, deserts of coin. You cannot imagine the line of debtors at my door in Mayfair. I married for money and wasted that, too.” His laughter died, he scowled, and suddenly raised the pistol and fired. And missed. “Damn! See what you made me do!”

“Albé, you fired of your own will, in a fit of rage. You cannot blame me if your passions overcome you.”

Byron turned to her, mouth open, incredulous, poised for a retort.

“Maisie—” Shelley put a hand on her arm, but stood next to her. “I must agree, Byron. You make yourself disagreeable only out of perversity. Or drink. This canker of aristocracy ill becomes you. Consider, for example, Polidori. The doctor is a man—”

“A man!” Byron swung to the table, caught his bad foot on a
clod of lawn, and stumbled. “Damn the man!” He gripped the edge of the table. “Not even a doctor. See how I still hobble, though I pay him to un-hobble me.” Mary stepped forward to offer support, but he waved her away angrily. “As for cankers, what sore upon the ass of society is it who consistently calls for its destruction? You, a country squire, calling for democracy? A country patriot, born to hunt, and vote, and raise the price of corn. Pah!” Reeling now, he stumbled towards the house. “Damn you all!”

Berger stepped past his master to open the door. Byron stumped through it and the servant followed him in. Mary and Shelley were left alone with the smell of gunpowder and the approaching storm. The damp wind ruffled Shelley's hair as he frowned after Byron. “A country squire?” His voice was soft but full of emotion. “Does he think I care?”

Mary patted his arm. “Pay him no mind.”

“But I must, my pet. He is the voice of a generation, whether he knows it or not. His poetry is read at every level of government, which means his thoughts are known at every level. And though I admire him for how he says it, I do not always agree with what he says. He presumes an inferiority between us which is wholly artificial, unjustifiable, and unnatural. The true difference between us exists nowhere in reality but in our own talents, which are not our own but Nature's—or in our rank—which is not our own but Fortune's.” Shelley stared down at his feet and kicked at the clod where Byron had stumbled. “Sometimes I think he is a slave to the vilest and most vulgar prejudices, and as mad as the winds.”