Outcasts (30 page)

“What is that?” he asked.

Claire lifted the book in her lap. “A book of ghost stories. Albé asked me to read from it tonight.”

“Capital!” Shelley cried, his eyes lighting up. “Nothing better for a stormy night!”

Mary looked at Claire's flushed face, her bright eyes, the air of repressed excitement. Claire's eyes kept going to Byron, who was lighting a cigar with a taper. “Indeed,” Mary murmured. “We may expect an exciting evening.”

Shelley reached past Claire's shoulder and picked up the book. “
Fantasmagoriana
. Yes, you mentioned this one. But this is all in French?”

Claire reached up and took the book back. “I have been practicing all afternoon,” she said. “I believe I can translate it for all of us.”

Shelley leaned down and kissed the top of her head. “My dear Claire, your talents astonish us all.”

“Especially those talents associated with her tongue,” said Byron.

Polidori shifted uneasily. “What would you read us, Miss Clairmont?”

She looked to the book. “This one is called the ‘Death-Bride'.”

“A ‘Death-Bride'?” Shelley cried. “It sounds the very thing! Come, Byron, share out some of that brandy, and we shall warm ourselves against a chilling story.”

Byron readily complied, filling not only Shelley's glass but Polidori's. He even lifted an eyebrow at Mary, but she shook her head. She fished her sewing out of her reticule, trying to still the nervous, queasy feeling at the bottom of her stomach. Claire was up to something, but she was not sure what.

Quite at ease, Claire opened the book. “I pray you will all forgive me for any clumsy wording,” she said. “I have run over the text a few times, but the translation is not of the best.”

Shelley raised his glass in a toast to her. “But your French is excellent, my dear!”

Claire smiled. “That may be, but this story has been translated from the German into French. And now I must render it in English, so pray be patient with me.”

“Patient? We shall all be dead before we hear it, at this pace,” Byron growled. “Proceed, if you please.” He leaned on the mantle, staring into the fire and drinking.

Claire flattened her hand against a page, and began to read. “'The summer had been uncommonly fine….”

It was a fine, though convoluted, story of a dead twin, an inconstant lover, a broken promise and a vengeful ghost. As Claire read in her clear, high voice, Mary grew even more uneasy. Claire had chosen a story of an abandoned, vengeful lover to read to Lord Byron. Was there more to that choice than met the eye?

The story ended with a twist, in which the narrator was revealed to be the ghost. Shelley, who had followed the entire story enraptured, burst into applause. “Oh, well done!” he said merrily. “The scene at the funeral vault fairly made my hair stand on end!”

Byron smiled sardonically. “Whereas the account of the bridal night made me stand on end!”

“Oh, fie, sir,” said Claire. “The bridegroom lay dead on the floor!”

“Would that I had died on my wedding-night,” he said bitterly.

“Then would we all have lost the felicity of your acquaintance,” said Mary calmly. “Fortunately for us, here you are. Claire, dearest, that was really well done. Your translation was seamless.”

“Thank you,” Claire said. “I was quite surprised when the young woman in the portrait gallery turned out to be the ghost.”

Polidori shifted his foot uncomfortably. “I would there was so attractive a ghost in our gallery. It runs next to my bedroom.”

Byron snorted. “Our Polly would like a comely phantom to drift into his bedchamber, belike. Only, would it warm your bones to swive a dead woman? Or freeze them? I confess that I myself have heretofore confined myself only to the living.” He tossed back the remaining brandy and reached for the bottle. “Perhaps you can open up new realms of research into the dead, my Polly.”

Polidori's face flushed. Mary leaned forward. “He is drunk, Doctor,” she said. “You know not to pay him any attention.”

Shelley was bent over the book of stories with Claire, helping her choose another. Byron seemed frozen in place, staring into the fire, paying no attention to anyone.

“He treats me abominably!” Polidori hissed at her. “Like a child or a mental deficient.”

She looked at him levelly. “Why do you remain, then?”

He looked at her with surprise. “Why? But what should I do?”

“Leave,” she said. “There is nothing to keep you, other than your own will.”

He blinked at her, open-mouthed, but said nothing. After a moment he flushed more deeply and looked away.

She put a hand on his arm. “Tell me you do not stay for me,” she said.

He looked back again, and this time his eyes were full of anguish. A beautiful young man, hardly older than herself, and yet so unworldly, so conventional, and so lost. She felt a deep sympathy for him, but nothing more. What would it take for him to grow up?

“I do not stay for you,” he said in a low, tight voice. “But I do not leave for you, either.” He turned away and stared into the fire.

“Come, we have another candidate,” Shelley cried brightly. He held up the book of ghost stories. “Polidori has chosen it, after a fashion.”

“I?” Polidori looked astonished.

“Yes,” Shelley said, handing the book back to Claire. “You mentioned the portrait gallery. Claire informs me that there is a story in this book called ‘Family Portraits', a chilling story.”

“Let us hear it, then,” Mary said. Any distraction would be welcome now.

She noted the high color in Claire's cheeks, as the girl leaned closer to the fire. This brought her closer to Byron, who did not move. “'Night had insensibly superseded day',” she began.

Outside, thunder muttered ominously, and rain pattered against the windows. The candles had burnt low in their sockets, so that now the fire cast a red light over the faces of the group. A log fell with a thump in the fire grate, sending up a handful of sparks. Byron lit another cigar, and the smell of it filtered through the room, laced with the smell of brandy, Mary's own lavender scent, and the lingering odor of cooked beets.

The story was convoluted: a portrait that fell and killed a young woman, her grieving fiancé's discovery of her near-twin in another city, the doomed romance, the ancestral portrait of grisly visage. Mary was struck by the way the story enfolded other stories inside itself, drawing the listener deeper and deeper into a tangled story of a family destroyed by a nightmare specter. Entering a castle at night, this ancestral ghost kissed his descendants, all of whom but one died before adulthood.

Byron interrupted at this point. “This is a tale I have heard elsewhere, I think.”

“You are disingenuous, my lord,” Mary said. Shelley's gaze met hers, and he nodded. He put a hand on Claire's shoulder. “Do halt a moment, dearest.”

Obediently, she put down her book while Shelley strode to the over-filled bookcase. He scanned the titles, moved a few, and then came up with a small volume. “Ah!” he cried. “I knew it. As do you, Albé:

Nor ear can hear nor tongue can tell

The tortures of that inward hell!

But first, on earth as Vampire sent,

Thy corse shall from its tomb be rent:

Then ghastly haunt thy native place,

And suck the blood of all thy race;

There from thy daughter, sister, wife,

At midnight drain the stream of life;

Yet loathe the banquet which perforce

Must feed thy livid living corse:

Thy victims ere they yet expire

Shall know the demon for their sire,

As cursing thee, thou cursing them,

Thy flowers are withered on the stem.

Shelley snapped the poetry book shut. “I recall that passage all too clearly. Do you not, Claire? It kept you awake half a week, I do believe.”

Polidori had leaned forward, fascinated. “I am not familiar with the work, Mr. Shelley. May I see?”

Shelley handed him the book. Mary caught sight of the title:
The Giaour.
“Of course,” she said. “One of your Turkish works, Albé. It made quite a sensation when it came out last year. But do you say that this tale of the ‘Family Portraits' is the same?”

Byron, who had scowled through Shelley's reading, shook his head, making his dark curls dance. “Not at all. It only tells me that they spring from the same source. This story may be from Germany, but it was written by someone who has traveled in the East.”

“Is that where you picked up the story?” Polidori asked, paging through the volume. “About this ‘giaour'?”

“I ran across it in Greece,” he said shortly. “Where the term they use is ‘vampire'.”

A silence fell on the room as he said the word, and the shadows seemed to thicken about the room.

“The vampire superstition is still general in the Levant. I recollect a whole family being terrified by the scream of a child, which they imagined must proceed from such a visitation. The Greeks never mention the word without horror.”

The book of ghost stories slipped from Claire's grasp; her hands went to her throat. “The … the creature drinks blood?”

Byron eyed her. “Not just any blood. The blood of its own children and grand-children.”

“And the ignorant believe this?” Polidori said incredulously. “I can scarce credit that anyone with reason could believe such a tale.”

“Oh, but the ignorant and superstitious will believe any tale,” Shelley said. “Cloak it in romance, or religion, or the history of kings, and they will believe the dead can rise and talk.”

Byron looked curiously at Shelley. “I thought you believed in ghosts,” he said. “Do you not hold with Wordsworth?”

… 'tis falsely said

That there was ever intercourse

Between the living and the dead.

“Of course I believe in ghosts,” said Shelley. “I may even have seen one or two!”

“But you are an avowed atheist,” Byron said. “Surely none could believe in ghosts without believing in God.”

“There may be no God in the sense that the church decrees,” Shelley said thoughtfully. “But there is something beyond this life. It is hard to credit that those vital persons we have known and loved, whose vitality and essence are so forcefully presented to our perception every day, will vanish like this candle.” He blew out the candle standing on the table beside Claire, who flinched. “It is unreasonable to think that the soul of man does not endure beyond the grave.”

“And do you believe that the dead can return? As other than ghosts?” Polidori said.

“As vampires, you mean?” Byron answered. He shook his head. “You are a man of science. What would convince you that the dead can rise?”

“But the experiments you talked of,” Claire said breathlessly. “The electricity, the movement of the limbs—”

“Is that enough to convince you?” Byron said. He looked around the room. “Is that all it would take? A pretty tale, dressed up with some science?”

“You yourself said the people of Greece believed it,” Polidori said. “Are they all fools and dolts?”

“They may well be,” Byron said. “Though I have ever thought them a brilliant and brave people.”

“I find it odd,” Mary said. “That a man who could write
The Giaour,
about monsters who destroy their own children, is stymied when it comes to writing about ghosts.”

Byron rounded on her, fire in his eye. “Stymied?”

“Surely all it would take,” she said coolly. “Is a pretty tale, dressed up with some science.”

Shelley applauded softly. “You have it, my love. Surely, Byron, you who have introduced vampires into the educated world can perform a similar service for mere ghosts.”

“Or you could write a story about vampires, rather than a poem,” Mary suggested.

Byron shook his head. “Cover the same ground twice, like a hunter after a fox who has doubled back? I think not. Besides, I have a personal dislike to ‘vampires' and the little acquaintance I have with them would by no means induce me to divulge their secrets.” This last was said with a toss of his curls and a sneer on his lips.

Polidori looked down at the volume of poetry in his hands. “Methinks his lordship feels himself inadequate to the task.”

Silence fell like a lead weight. All stared at Polidori, unwilling to look at Byron's red face.

Don't do this, Mary thought silently. Do not taunt him.

But Polidori, true to form, could not resist one goad too many. “Perhaps I shall write a play about a ghost, and outshine your vampire.”

Shelley chuckled. “Let us hope it contains no ‘goitered idiots of the Alps'.”

Byron drew himself up to his full height, looking down at Polidori. Then he looked up, meeting Mary's cool gaze. He looked around, at Claire, then at Shelley. “Very well then,” he said in a low voice. “We shall each of us write a ghost story. And we shall see which of us is published first.”

“Will you include the ladies in this challenge?” Shelley said, arms crossed on his chest.

Byron blinked. “The ladies?” His smile came and went like lightning leaping across the Alps. “Of course. Though we must not, perhaps, expect much.”

Claire rose to her feet, carefully gathering her skirts. “You do not expect much from Mary or me? How poor an opinion you have of us.” Her voice held a taut undercurrent. Mary could not determine whether it was fear or anger.

Byron looked taken aback. “Well, of course, if Mary … but to grovel in the charnel house, among tombs and decayed corpses, surely that is unwarranted for two young ladies of taste.”

Claire faced him squarely, her head high. “Albé, you mention Mary but not me. Have I nothing to contribute, do you think? Have I nothing to give you?”