Stealing Athena

by Karen Essex

  Elgin looked at her with fury in his eyes. “I knew it!” he hissed. “You have been deceiving me for years. I knew it in Paris, but I allowed you to convince me to the contrary. You are a betrayer and an adulteress. Neither William nor Lucy is my child, and you know it. Dear God, women are not to be trusted.”

  He paced about her room, giving her relief from his eyes, which were full of hate. “I allowed you too much freedom. That was my mistake,” he said, as if trying to work out a problem. “Women are fanciful creatures, unleashing their emotions and their lust wherever they are allowed. None of you should be let loose to prey upon the feelings of men!”

  “Elgin, I have not committed adultery, though with the way that you have treated me in our marriage, it is a miracle that I did not do so. You will find nothing in my behavior to contradict that. I am nothing to you, it is apparent. Why did you come back here? You know that you want nothing to do with me.”

  “You exhaust me,” he said. “I should have been a sterner husband. I shan’t make the same mistake again.”

  He left her room, and refused to speak with her. She wrote him a long letter explaining that she had committed a sin in her heart, but her body had been his alone. She begged him to believe that for so very long, her love for him had been pure and unadulterated, and that though her heart had wavered, she had remained chaste.

  She could not have him tag her with the sin of adultery. She would be an outcast for life. She was no entertainer like Emma Hamilton. She was the daughter of a respectable and wealthy man, the great-granddaughter of the 2nd Duke of Rutland and granddaughter of the beloved Lady Robert Manners, who could trace her lineage to the Plantagenet kings. She was thought to be the essence of all that was good and decent in a young woman. But if Elgin was bound and determined to paint her as an adulterous woman, everyone would be on his side. He would have cause to bring legal action against her, even to remove the children from her custody.

  She had no choice but to humble herself and play the repentant wife. No judge would care that her husband had driven her to infidelity. For a woman, there was no excuse for falling from grace. But all of her words, no matter how impassioned, fell upon deaf ears.

  “I shall cast you out of my life forever. You shall have the separation that you and your lover yearn for.”

  Those were his last words to her. He left immediately for London, leaving her to wonder what his next move might be. She kept the children close to her, encouraging them to sleep with her at night, so afraid was she that he would try to claim them. Weeks later, she received a letter from his lawyers. If her trustees transferred enough money into his accounts to relieve all of his debts, he would divorce Mary quietly. If not, he would pursue a public trial that would bring shame upon her and leave her ruined in society.

  “What man would do that to his children?” Mr. Nisbet asked.

  Her father had been wavering in his support for her. He could not imagine the circumstances that would cause a married woman to stray. Mary knew that both he and her mother wanted to believe her assurances that she had not committed adultery with Robert, but they remained somewhat skeptical. Both had witnessed his attention to her in London and at home, and it had made them uncomfortable. Both had warned her that even if she was innocent, her behavior was bound to be misinterpreted by anyone who knew how much time Robert spent in her company, and the manner in which they ran about town like a married couple.

  “Elgin is in London seeing to the inventory of his statues. He is desperate to exhibit them, but he does not have the money to do so,” Mary said. “The marbles are his grand obsession. We must give him the money immediately. If he can finally display them so that all the world may see what a great service the ‘visionary’ Lord Elgin has done for mankind, he will be placated.”

  Mr. Nisbet looked perturbed. “He seduced me into underwriting his folly. I should have known better at the time. It is unseemly for a grown man with responsibilities to indulge in this sort of venture. But I shall send him what he asks for. Neither my daughter nor my grandchildren must be subjected to public disgrace that would haunt them all the days of their lives.”

  Mr. Nisbet wrote to Mr. Coutts in London, arranging for Elgin to receive the money he requested—a huge sum, thought Mary, one that might keep a sensible man in comfortable means for the rest of his life. Of course, it would not last in Elgin’s hands, but Mary was relieved that she had saved her children, herself, and Robert the humiliation that Elgin might have heaped upon them all. By the time he arranged for the exhibition and paid the rest of his debts, she would be done with all negotiations between them. Elgin would probably take a diplomatic position in a faraway capital, and they would never see each other again. When he came to Scotland, she could arrange for the children to visit with him while she remained discreetly absent. When the children were older, they could travel to wherever their father was serving his government, thereby expanding their knowledge of the world.

  These thoughts helped her make peace with what had seemed an impossible situation. She had no idea what Elgin would do next, but she guessed that the proceedings would move quickly and quietly. With enough money to care for the marbles and display them, he could turn his attention to his obsession and be done with her, except when he needed more money, which her father would have to send him if he wanted to continue to avoid scandal. It could have been worse. At least Elgin was willing to be paid off.

  Perhaps he would divorce her quietly. She would be stigmatized, true, but her lineage and her father’s power and money could protect her from a certain amount of public abuse. And, as Robert pointed out, after a year had passed, she would be free to marry her beloved.

  Archerfield Estate, in the county of East Lothian, June 22, 1807

  BECAUSE OF HER FATHER’S wealth and connections, Mary discovered the horror that awaited her before it came knocking on the door. The sheriff of East Lothian had known Mary since she was a baby and had enough respect for Mr. Nisbet to give warning of what was to happen—had to happen according to the law, but he was mightily sorry to be subjecting such noble persons as Mr. and Mrs. William Nisbet and their daughter to the ordeal.

  Nonetheless, on the appointed morning, the man announced himself at Archerfield and read the document that Mary could not believe truly existed.

  The sheriff looked miserable as he read the words: “‘The right honorable Thomas Bruce, seventh Earl of Elgin and eleventh Earl of Kincardine, is petitioning for divorce from Mary, Countess of Elgin and Kincardine, on grounds of adultery with a man or men known not to be the said Thomas, Earl of Elgin, and on further grounds of being an unfit mother. The charges shall be proven in court and followed by an Act of Parliament. From the marriage, five children were procreated, of whom four are alive today. Those children are hereby given in sole custody to Thomas, Earl of Elgin, and shall reside with him and under his care, not to receive contact or visitation from Mary, Countess of Elgin.’

  “I am sorry, Lady Elgin,” the sheriff said. “But this is the law.”

  They had barely finished breakfast. The servants were skulking about, eavesdropping, under the guise of cleaning or making tea or seeing to the needs of the children. They knew all too well what was happening. Stories of children being torn from their adulterous or otherwise unfit mothers abounded. Most of the maids—and not a few of the aristocrats—entertained themselves with gossipy pamphlets laying out the sordid details of the lurid affair between Lady This One and Sir That One that led to the lady’s never seeing her little ones again. “And to think, a lady who had exhibited none but a pious nature before she met the dastardly seducer who would be her downfall, would choose satiating her lusts over her own beloved little ones!” That was the sort of thing they all read, and now, that scorned lady would be Mary.

  “But we paid him off!” Mary cried. “He swore that he would avoid this if we gave him the money. That lying, deceiving Scot!”

  “It isn’t the first time he’s been duplicitous,” Mr. Nisbe
t said. “No matter how many ways he reveals his dark nature, it is always a shock.”

  “Pardon me. The children?” the sheriff said. He might as well have been asking for his tea. He looked at Bruce, who was tearing through the parlor, being chased by Andrew.

  “I don’t wish to go to Father!” Lord Bruce protested. “I want to stay here and play soldiers with Andrew!”

  “Well, you must go,” Mary said, her voice quavering. She fell against her father, putting her face into his shoulder so that the children could not see her fear. She was not crying—not yet—but trying to quell her terror so that she could calmly, and temporarily, she was sure, tell her children goodbye. “Your father wishes to spend time with you this summer; it is a great surprise.”

  “My father can kiss my beautiful little behind,” the boy said, and then ran off through the hallway. Mr. Nisbet signaled for Andrew to run after him. Andrew caught him, and the boy’s cries could be heard echoing all the way from the garden. “Pack a few things, Andrew,” Mr. Nisbet whispered as Andrew carried Bruce over his shoulder and up the stairs.

  Little Mary, who imitated her big brother’s every word and motion, hid herself in her grandmother’s skirts. “I don’t want to go either. I want to stay with my sisters.”

  The little girls were upstairs in the nursery. “Are you taking all of them?” Mary asked the sheriff. “Is this really necessary? I shall ride to Broomhall at once and talk to Lord Elgin.”

  “You do not want to do that, Lady Elgin,” the sheriff said. “It could be taken as a hostile act or a threat and would be used against you in the courtroom. I have seen it many times. No use in giving in to hysteria. It’s one of the very signs of an unfit mother.”

  “Is that how the law operates?” Mary cried, her voice uncontrollably shrill as her daughter ran from her grandmother’s skirts to her mother’s. “Take a woman’s children away, and then call her hysterical and unfit when she protests?”

  The sheriff shrugged. “I do not make the laws, Lady Elgin, I only enforce them as I am ordered.”

  “Don’t call me that!” she said. “I never wish to be called Lady Elgin again.”

  Elgin, Elgin, Elgin. How she had loved the sound of the words “Lady Elgin” when she first was married. She had paraded around with Masterman, clowning on the morning after her wedding, forcing the woman to call her Lady Elgin at the beginning and end of every sentence, and then falling into a fit of giggles on the bed. Now the very sound of the name revolted her, arousing memories of her noseless husband lording it over her, even in bed, where his disfigurement was sickening, but not so sickening as the way that he tried to control and manipulate her outside the bedroom.

  Mrs. Nisbet called Little Mary’s governess, who took the protesting child upstairs. Mary had never let her children be torn away from her. Never. Only under Elgin’s orders, as when she, brokenhearted, had to part with them at Naples so that Elgin could have his tour of Europe—the very tour that landed him in prison and their marriage in ruins.

  “Elgin is trying to frighten you, Mary,” Mr. Nisbet said. “Get hold of yourself. We will sort it out. I’ll wager that if a big wad of money is transferred to his bank, he will release the children immediately. The extortionist!”

  “How dare he bring scandal upon this house?” Mrs. Nisbet said. “What sort of man would do that to his own children? Drag his wife through a divorce court? It’s unspeakable.”

  “Our outrage will not change this outcome,” Mary said, calming herself. “Now, sheriff, what can we do?”

  The sheriff put his head down, shrugging his shoulders. He played nervously with his hat. “There is nothing, milady.”

  “Nothing? Nothing a mother can do to reverse the loss of her children?”

  “If the father wishes to claim custody of his children, there is nothing anyone can do to contest him. That is the law. I have seen this many times. I wish I could help you. Now, if you’ll cooperate, I must escort the children to Broomhall and deliver them to the custody of Lord Elgin, or I will lose my badge.”

  The city of Athens, in the tenth year of the Thirty-Year Truce with Sparta

  ONE CAN EITHER PROVOKE or charm a jury, Aspasia,” Sokrates said. “I advise the latter, of course. The mere fact that your body wears the evidence of Perikles’ love will win them to your side. All the world loves a pregnant woman, even if she is considered a harlot. Do nothing to provoke and you will walk away acquitted.”

  “This is wise advice, my friend,” I said. “But they have done so much to provoke me that I wish to return just a little bit of the sentiment.”

  “One can either be right or be happy,” he said. “I leave it to you to choose which is more important to you.”

  Sokrates had taken a keen interest in my trial, coming to console and advise me as soon as he heard the news. “Your brother-in-law and his accomplice Elpinike are running around town saying that you turned the home of a citizen into a fuck-factory, and that you attempted to seduce free women into prostitution, a charge that, if proven, is punishable by death! This is the most interesting—and strangely prurient—prosecution in recent history. I’m fascinated!”

  I was happy to have a friend to help me lay out my strategy. The charges were impiety and procurement, and we were convinced that neither could be proven according to Athenian law. Perikles agreed, and acted with such complete confidence that I would be acquitted that he was difficult to engage in the discussions. We were aware that I was being persecuted for being a foreign woman with influence over Athens’s most powerful man, and—as Alkibiades had warned me years ago—for opening my big mouth and letting my wisdom fly out of it.

  “That is not a crime in itself,” I said to Sokrates. “For nowhere in the laws is it written that a woman must keep her mouth shut.”

  “True. But it is considered natural law that she should. And you are a woman who is threatening to overturn the natural order of things.”

  “By speaking?”

  “Yes! You are the first woman who will be allowed to be present at a trial. It is unheard of, you realize. Speaking is your biggest fault, as far as the men of Athens are concerned—speaking as a philosopher, or speaking on political matters with Perikles.”

  “But what about Diotima? She speaks as a philosopher.”

  “Diotima is protected by the office of High Priestess. When she speaks, she is speaking with the authority of the goddess, so no one minds. When you speak, you are usurping the man’s right to supremacy. When you advise Perikles, you are usurping the rights of his male peers. When you boldly move about town going where you please and conversing with whomever you choose, you are threatening all men by raising the possibility that their wives will find reason to do the same.”

  “Let us put this to rational inquiry,” I said.

  “Only if you call for more wine,” he answered. We were sitting on a new couch in the courtyard of my home. I’d had it made for me to lounge on during the heat of the day, when my pregnancy made it uncomfortable to nap indoors. Here, under an awning made of sturdy white linen, and propped on comfortable cushions, I could rest.

  I called for more wine for my friend, and proceeded to lay out my thoughts. “If the goddess of the city whom all good men worship and honor possesses all of the qualities that men cherish and wish to emulate, such as wisdom, boldness, courage, strategic thinking, and the like, and if Athena is a female, then is it not logical that females possess these qualities?”

  “It would seem to be so,” Sokrates said.

  “And if females possess these qualities, then should female opinion not be heard and listened to? Should women not operate freely in society as men do?”

  I could feel my face flush as I spoke, embracing my own argument, and wanting him to follow my thinking.

  “I cannot argue with your logic, Aspasia. But your logic will get you nowhere with an Athenian jury. All I can tell you is this: Just be a good girl. That is what the jurors will need to see. If you show them the brazen whore
of their imagining, they will convict you. If you show them the good girl, the obedient one, they will acquit.”

  “Perhaps I should make a special sacrifice to Pandrosos to help me learn obedience,” I said sarcastically.

  “Perhaps that would be a good investment,” he replied without a trace of the usual irony.

  “Do you not see the contradiction? You are asking me to play the role of the good and obedient girl. But if I do so, I cannot challenge these ridiculous charges.”

  “You must challenge them by proving them untrue, unreasonable, and immoderate, and by presenting yourself as reasonable and moderate, two virtues that we Greeks allegedly value above almost all others. ‘Nothing in excess,’ commands the god Apollo. You must show no undue emotion. This is crucial. You must drop this line of inquiry on the inherent virtues of women that we must all recognize and honor.”

  “But my argument is logical, and Athenians value logic,” I said.

  “But those ideas make your face go red and your voice go shrill. If you allow yourself to become emotionally charged, you will be seen as a Medea, a foreign woman out of control. I am telling you this: Athenians believe that foreigners and women are full of unrestrained emotions and unbridled lust. If left uncontrolled, such people will destroy this reasonable and civilized society that we have built for ourselves. You are both a foreigner and a woman, and neither of those attributes is working in your favor. Therefore, Aspasia, try not to show off when you defend yourself, or I promise you it will get you in trouble.”

  The baby inside of me began kicking, as if to punctuate the correctness of Sokrates’ argument. I knew my friend was right; promoting the virtues of women based on the virtues of the goddess would not refute the charges against me, but would merely challenge the notions that kept us quiet and invisible in the public sphere.