Outcasts (32 page)

Claire suddenly sagged, as if she were a marionette whose strings had been cut. “Albé, please.”

A noise at the door; Mary turned to see Polidori standing rigid, holding a bottle in one hand. His eyes locked with Mary's
and his look was hot, angry. But then Claire turned away from the fireplace and the light showed the devastation in her face. Polidori lunged forward.

“Miss Clairmont! You are drenched!” He took her hands. “Your hands are freezing!”

Claire sagged against him. “Help me get her into bed,” Shelley said. He glanced over his shoulder. “Mary?”

She gently pried Polidori away from Claire, and put Claire's arm over her shoulder. Polidori pressed the small bottle into her hand. “Laudanum,” he whispered. “To calm her nerves.”

Byron stepped towards his study. “Polly! Come here, I need your assistance.” Polidori glanced back at Claire, then stumped after his master.

Half-dragging, half-walking the stumbling girl between them, Shelley and Mary followed Fletcher to a small bedroom on the other side of the house. Fletcher strode into the room, flinging dust covers off of a small table, an armchair, a desk. He swept back the hangings from the bed and plumped at it.

Shelley led Claire to the armchair and put her in it. “I'll make up the fire,” he said. “Do you have anything for her to wear?” he asked Fletcher.

The servant met his gaze squarely. “She has left … clothing … in his lordship's chambers before,” he said. “I will ask the maid to bring them.” He hesitated, his eyes on Claire, and a look of compassion flitted across his face. “If it will help, I will fetch Miss Clairmont some broth.” He bowed and withdrew.

Claire leaned forward and put her face in her hands. Mary stood near her, adjusting the blankets while Shelley made up a fire.

“I thought he loved me. I know he did.”

Mary stroked her hair, drawing the long tresses through her fingers. “Maybe he did. Do not tease yourself over it now. It is late and you are tired. For your sake, and the babe's, you should rest.”

“How can I ever sleep again?”

Shelley snorted bitterly. “Oh, you will sleep. That's the hell of it, my dear. That you can endure great pain and anguish, yet you will continue to breathe and eat and live.” He had got the
fire going, and now stood to reach for a poker. “As long as one has ties and affections, one is subject to disappointment and pain. Love denied turns to poison so very easily.” He put aside the poker, knelt, and took Claire's hands in his own. Gently, he kissed her forehead. “My dear girl, that is why we must love so often, so freely. We must spread love as far and wide as we can, seed it o'er the universe.”

Claire's fingers clutched his. “I only wanted to make him happy.”

A knock on the door; Mary answered it to find a pudgy maid holding out a bundle of Claire's clothes. She curtsied, peeking slyly past Mary to catch a glimpse of Claire. Mary moved to block her view, and took the clothes. “That will be all, thank you very much,” she said firmly, and closed the door.

Shelley had touched his forehead to Claire's, and the two of them sat holding hands, close before the fire. Mary stood with clothing in her arms and looked at their silhouette. What was to become of Claire? What would Godwin's reaction be, he who had always thought of Claire as a victim of Shelley, not an accomplice? What would become of the child? It was not even born yet, did not show below Claire's bodice yet, but already was a source of trouble and tears. She had no illusions that Byron would share Claire's life, share the child, would take any trouble at all over it. Thinking of her sister Fanny, forever scorned for her illegitimate birth, Mary feared for the future of Claire's baby.

The child was not yet born, she thought to herself. Yet it is already rejected.

Mary laid out the dry clothing on the counterpane: at least the chemise had been laundered, so she could get Claire into that and then into bed.

Shelley rose from the fireplace, releasing Claire's hands. “I will go to him,” he said simply.

Mary walked with him to the door; just as she opened it, thunder pealed overhead. She leaned to whisper in Shelley's ear. “The weather is worse indoors than out, I vow.”

Shelley nodded quietly. The windows suddenly rattled as the wind threw rain at it like an assault of gravel. “I wish we could take Claire home. But I fear that in this downpour, we would be soaked before we progressed five feet.”

Mary agreed. “We must stay here.”

“And Albé will be up all night. If we let him go to bed, he may change his mind about Claire,” Shelley said. He glanced past Mary to where Claire sat staring at the fire. “Put her to bed, then rejoin us. Let us see if we can keep his lordship's mind occupied tonight, lest he brood.”

She nodded, and he left. Mary helped Claire to shed her soaked clothing and then toweled her off. She helped her into her shift, made sure her hair was dry, and led her to the bed.

“I want to go home,” Claire murmured at one point.

“It is too stormy,” Mary said.

“Not that home. My home. I want my mother.”

Mary sighed inwardly. She could not imagine Jane Godwin's reaction to her daughter's out of wedlock pregnancy by the notorious Lord Byron. “My dear,” she said, “you really must get into the bed.”

A knock on the door again, and this time Claire whirled towards it. “It is he! He has come!”

“Byron? No, Claire, he—”

“Oh, not Albé. I mean him, the demon who walks in his shadow, the dark angel!”

“Claire, what do you mean? You are raving again.” Mary pushed her step-sister towards the bed. “Get in, and I will answer the door.”

Claire crept in between the covers, and Mary stepped to the door. She laid her hand on the latch, but hesitated. Claire's fear, or the weather, or the scene with Byron, had unnerved her, and she wondered, just for one tiny moment, what stood on the other side of the door.

Mary drew a deep breath and yanked open the door.

John Polidori, looking startled, stood with a tray in his hands, on which rested a covered bowl. “How is she?” he asked.
“I have brought a restorative.”

Mary ushered him in. “Thank you, Doctor.” She took the tray from him.

Polidori cleared his throat. “I am glad to offer my services in a professional capacity,” he said importantly. “I am trained in obstetrics, as well as other faculties.”

Claire glared at him over the rim of the bowl. “Did he send you? Does he now care at least for his own flesh and blood?”

“In my capacity as his lordship's physician, I must look after his interests. Including, er, his children.”

Mary and Claire both stared at him. Slowly, a pink flush climbed Polidori's cheeks.

He bowed stiffly. “Pray excuse me, ladies.” He bowed himself out and shut the door.

Mary looked at Claire, and Claire at Mary. “I could almost laugh,” Claire said. “He is so ridiculous.”

“Yes,” Mary said, handing her the bowl and a spoon. “But of us all, he is the only one who is … normal.”

“Normal?” Claire scowled into her cooling broth.

Mary busied herself spreading the damp clothes before the fire to dry. “Byron's father abandoned him in childhood. Shelley's father has cut him off. Godwin has rejected all intercourse with either of us,” she said as calmly as she could. “But John Polidori was raised in a loving family, with a father who supported him. He is neither cast off nor inclined to cast anyone off.” She rubbed her face with her hands, then extended them to the warmth of the fire.

“To Polly, we must seem like a collection of outcasts.”

…. when I considered the improvement which every day takes place in science and mechanics, I was encouraged to hope my present attempts would at least lay the foundations of future success. Nor could I consider the magnitude and complexity of my plan as any argument of its impracticability. It was with these feelings that I began the creation of a human being.

—Frankenstein,
Volume II,
Chapter III

C
laire finally
dropped off into an exhausted sleep. Mary watched her awhile, and then crept out in search of Shelley. She found him standing on the balcony, watching the wild weather. He was soaked to the skin.

“Shelley!” she brought him his greatcoat and he shrugged into it. “You must come inside.”

“She was right to come out here,” he said. “Claire followed the right instinct, consulting with Nature.”

“Her consultation may result in poultices and emetics ere morning,” Mary said practically. “I will not have two patients on my hands! If you do not come inside immediately, I shall—I shall call Doctor Polidori!”

That name was enough to break the spell of sky and rain, and Shelley stepped back over the threshold, dripping water on the carpet.

They settled before the fire; Shelley poked at it thoughtfully.

“Byron?” Mary asked.

“Went to bed,” Shelley said. He grimaced. “I believe he took the chambermaid with him, or perhaps his valet.”

“Or perhaps both,” Mary said. She laid a hand on his. “What will he do? About Claire?”

Shelley shook his head, water dripping from his curls onto the hearth. “He will acknowledge the child, and will provide for it, only—”

“Only what?”

Shelley rubbed his eyes. In the firelight, he looked older than his years. “He will only agree, if she gives the child to him.”

“What? Monstrous! You cannot allow it!”

Shelley looked at her out of innocent blue eyes. “Allow? It is not mine to say yea or nay, Mary. He refuses to let her raise his child. He will not have it raised by ‘atheists'.” His tone was bitter.

“She is talking of returning to my father's house,” Mary said. “Godwin will not accept her or the child. If Claire attempts to return home, if she tries to have the child at Skinner Street, with my father and her mother there—Oh, Shelley, I cannot imagine what he will say!”

“Claire wants Godwin's good opinion,” Shelley said. “Is mine not enough?”

“Dearest … no.” She swallowed. “Despite all he has said about marriage, about love, despite all that you agreed together in your long talks, my father's good opinion of me—or Claire—is not sustained when I actually live as he taught.”

“And your own?”

“My own?” Mary frowned.

“Is your own good opinion of Mary not enough to sustain you? Or must you have the support of Custom, and the world, and all those chains we have thrown off?”

“Have we thrown them off? Or have you, my love, freed yourself only?” She could hear her voice growing sharp, but could not prevent herself.

“But we are equals, above that world of shadow and hypocrisy! We are free, my Mary!”

“You, perhaps, are free, as all men are freer than women. Albé is free. Polidori, even, is free. Claire and Mary, however, cannot have the freedom in this world that we were promised.”

“But—”

“Promised, Shelley! From the hour I was born, I was told that the world could be reformed, perfected, if only we lived reformed and perfected lives, if only we stayed true to principle.”

“Yes,” Shelley said eagerly. “And by example—”

“Example? Do you know know what we are examples of? Me, Claire, Fanny—all three of us are rejects. We are examples of decadence to the entire world! As are you and Albé!”

Shelley looked distressed. “Why do you care what those snickering hypocrites think?”

“Shelley, if I am to be an example of a better world, perhaps it would be useful if I were not regarded with loathing.”

He paused for a long moment. “Does this mean you no longer hold to those principles—”

“Oh, Shelley, do stop philosophizing for one moment!” Mary cried.

He held out his arms and she stepped into them. He folded his arms close about her; she smelled wet wool and sweat, and took comfort in the scent that said Shelley to her heart.

“When we are together, when we are alone, just you and me and Will-mouse, I care nothing for the opinion of the world. Oh, why can we not just live quietly somewhere, we and our children, and write and dream and live as we will!”

He said nothing, but rocked slightly back and forth, as if comforting a child.

“But there is Claire,” she added reluctantly. “She has nothing. You know that she will not have Byron, despite her scheming and wishing. What is she to live on?”

“Of course I will support her. And the child,” Shelley said.

“Which everyone will say—all those snickering hypocrites across the lake there—is your child.”

“I do not care. You know this.”

“You should care, Shelley. Not for your sake, not even for Claire's. You choose to cast off the world, as it casts you off. So does Claire. But the child will grow up despised and rejected by the world, for no fault or cause of its own.”

“Who cares if fools despise you?”

Mary wrapped her arms around herself. “I would not, if it were from my own actions, my own choices. But my father made Fanny infamous when she was barely a child.”

“You refer to your father's publication of your mother's
papers. But that is a sublime book! Your mother's life is a shining example of merit, of courage—”

“It made Fanny the most notorious bastard in England,” Mary cried. “Yes, my mother was courageous, and yes, he loved her! But to show his love that way, to publish her private papers, her journals, her failures and doubts, was to strip her naked before the world!”

“You blame him for publishing?” Shelley asked soberly.

“I blame him for not realizing the effect it would have. Had he kept those things private, just for myself, Fanny, Claire, yes, that would have been unarguable. I am persuaded my mother would have kept nothing from me, would have opened her life to me on every level. But to grow up knowing that her very name—my name!—is condemned without justice, without understanding—”