There had to be a way to gain his attention. She would have to think of it. Of course, there was one person whose letters Godwin would never refuse.
“Shelley …”
Chapter IV - Eavesdropping
A new existence would bless me as its creator and source; many happy and excellent natures would owe their being to me. No father could claim the gratitude of his child so completely as I should deserve theirs.
—Frankenstein, Volume I, Chapter VI
The breeze off the lake was chilly as Mary stepped outdoors to go look for Shelley. She wrapped her shawl around her shoulders and made her way down the lawn to the edge of the water.
Cool and deep, it surged and lapped at the breakwater below her. What words could she use to capture the smell of water? Fresh, yet as old as time. Shadows hid the distant city of Geneva, and the wavelets made restless little sounds at her feet, as if complaining that life was too tame now that the storm had passed. Yet, over the top of Mont Jura, here came a mass of dark grey; she thought of armies marching, of the cannons that sounded so much like thunder. It was easy to see where ancient peasants got the idea of a god in the sky as lord of storms and lord of hosts. She smiled to herself, knowing what Shelley would make of the idea. On the subject of God, or rather not-God, Shelley could talk for hours.
It was a marvel, she thought, how Nature could have moods like a person. She had seen these very wavelets now lapping grumpily at her feet whirl and dash in a fury against stone and tree. She had seen these same puffy clouds driven like slaves before a tyrant wind, shredded by its violence, piled one on another as they were forced over Jura and Mont Blanc. She had seen the lightning jump from cloud to peak, from cloud to cloud. What messages were those flashes carrying? What language did the clouds speak?
I am getting to be as fanciful as Claire, she thought. She smiled a little grimly at the thought.
There was no sign of Shelley having come this way; perhaps she should look for him in the other direction. The smell of rain grew stronger, and with a sigh Mary turned to go. The path back up across the lawn looked slippery, so she chose the longer but safer route up the stone-paved walkway that ran up through the vineyard separating her house from Byron’s villa. The vineyard was in full leaf, a green bower whose vines rose nearly to the height of Shelley’s head. She, a head shorter than her lover, was completely dwarfed. It was like being lost in a wood, but one nowhere near as terrifying as the woods above Geneva, where their coach had broken down. Lost in memory, she almost missed the sounds ahead of her. Until one voice brought her up short.
“Again! Oh, my lord, take me again!”
Mary froze. It was Claire, and from her words, she was not alone. Mary wondered if she should go back.
“Oh, cease, woman!” Byron’s mocking laughter rang out. “Here, take your stocking. I fear it is ruined.”
“No, not yet! Do not go!”
“Much as I should be flattered, my dear, I really have no inclination to tumble you yet again in a damp underbrush. Nay, indeed, I am inclined, as you may plainly see, rather than at that angle that would most engage our mutual attention.”
Mary felt her cheeks warm at Byron’s words, but could not make herself retreat to give them privacy. Not just yet.
“Albé, I beg you, stay a moment. I must tell you something.”
“If it’s about dinner, yes, of course we shall come,” Byron said. There were the sounds of cloth on cloth, the tick of a buckle. Mary surmised that someone—most likely his lordship—was getting dressed. “But I must really get on, I—”
“Wait.” And there was something so soft and pleading, so intimate in Claire’s voice that Mary actually took a step backwards, seeking to give them privacy.
“What is it?”
“My lord!” Fletcher called from some distance. “My lord, are you there?”
“It will have to wait, my girl,” Mary heard Byron say. “It would be better if we were not discovered.”
“I don’t care,” Claire’s voice rang out defiantly. “Let them talk! Fletcher knows all about us!”
“Yes, but the rest of Geneva does not. Or at any event, not yet,” Byron said. “I would keep it that way, for your sake at least. There are already too many tongues wagging about me and mine. I would not have you included.”
“I don’t care!” Claire repeated. “I love you. I care nothing for the opinions of the low and ignorant. You and I, we are alive and in love—”
“In love? Do not flatter yourself, dear girl. This has been a pleasant interlude, but do not give yourself airs!” Byron said testily.
Mary put her hand to her mouth. Claire could be a pest and a headache, but she did not deserve such low treatment. She pushed forward, determined to break through the hedge and support her step-sister. The soft pleading in Claire’s voice stopped her.
“You called me your little fiend, you said we were friends of the heart,” Claire said passionately. “I know you love me!”
“Peace, woman! What I say in bed is not to be taken seriously. As for being a friend, a mistress never is nor can be a friend. While we agree, we are lovers, and when it is over, we are anything but friends.”
“Think you that I am as weak willed as all the others?” Claire said. Mary felt heat go over her. “All the other women I have read about? The men I have heard whispered about? Your own wife?”
“Take care,” Byron snarled. “I do not take well to slander.”
Claire was not discouraged. “Women have failed you and failed you, have they not? Because they are mired in the ignorance of our age, that holds that men and women cannot be equals.”
“You are not my equal!” Byron nearly shouted.
“I am as intelligent, as passionate, as any man. As you yourself, Albé. You know—”
“You cannot compare yourself to me, child,” Byron said.
“You care so much for rank?” A note of contempt crept into Claire’s voice. “I had not thought you so … so poor-spirited.”
“I am not your Shelley or your Godwin,” Byron said in a hard voice.
“But do you not fleer at convention, at what the ignorant and close-minded say you must be, should be? You, who could be any genius—”
“As always, you misunderstand,” Byron broke in. “Let me make it plain to you, madam. I am a nobleman. You are a commoner—”
“Oh, that matters nothing between two who … who love one another—”
“Think you that we live in isolation? Claire, I do not live on an island, at least, I no longer do. I do not live in a remote forest or a mountain top, nor do you. We live in a world that is hostile to us, to you. Think you that your innocence or your ideals will protect you from scorn?”
“My father cares nothing for the small-minded world—”
“The more fool he,” Byron said. Mary heard exasperation in his voice. “Shelley may think him a genius, I think he is a dangerously naive fool.”
Claire gasped. Mary shook her head; although she had suspected Byron of conventional notions, this was her first confirmation of it. Well, it was to be expected.
“Albé.” Claire’s voice was soft, caressing. “Here, your cravat is crooked….”
“I can dress myself, I thank you,” his lordship said testily.
“Stand still,” Claire said. There was silence, while Mary imagined Claire’s quick fingers tying her lover’s neckcloth. Mary recollected how often Claire had assisted her father in this way. “There. Even Fletcher will not find that completely disreputable, I fancy. Albé, I … I really must speak to you about something important.”
A long, deep sigh from Byron. “Child, I already know.”
Mary blinked. He knew? Claire echoed her thought. “How do you know?”
“Any fool can see what you want,” Byron said. “You want me to be Shelley to your Mary. It cannot be. I will not live that way.”
“But you have had mistresses, lovers, you surely cannot care what people say!”
“God!�
� Byron’s voice was tight. “Such unworldliness. Claire, how do you live? I declare Shelley and Godwin both have much to answer for.”
“Why are you angry? What do you care? I know that I, for my part, care nothing for what people say of us.” Claire’s voice took on the familiar defiant quality.
“Of course you do not.” Mary heard Byron draw a long, shuddering breath. It sounded as if he was close, as if she could reach through the hedge and touch his sleeve. “Claire, you do not know what it would be like. You are unknown, and I pray God you stay unknown to the world. A connection with me will bring you more notoriety than any lifetime can hold. You say I care nothing for gossip; you are mistaken. I care. I cannot help but care. And there is nothing, nothing I can do. Do you know what is said of me in the drawing rooms of London? Do you know that they—”
There was a choked silence, and a rustle of leaves. Then Claire’s voice, soft and low. “Here. Let me hold you. I know it hurts, what they say. They are jealous, and they are liars. And I know there is nothing behind your words, Albé, nothing but despair. They have hurt you, but I will not. I will never hurt you.” There was the soft sound of a kiss, and Claire’s whisper. “My love.”
Mary stepped quickly and quietly backwards the way she had come. There were soft murmurs in the vineyard ahead of her, and perhaps a sob, though she could not tell whose. Her foot came down on something hard and she stumbled—Claire’s shoe lay in the path. She left it there as she continued backing away. When she was far enough down the path, she turned and hurried back to the house.
It was not until she crossed the threshold that she realized there were tears on her cheeks.
Chapter V - Domestic Interior
William, the youngest of our family, was yet an infant, and the most beautiful little fellow in the world; his lively blue eyes, dimpled cheeks, and endearing manners, inspired the tenderest affection.
—Frankenstein, Volume I, Chapter I
Mary hurried into the house, distraught. Should she tell Shelley what she had overheard? Should she speak to Claire? Should she say nothing? The latter seemed the wisest course, at least until she knew Claire’s mind better.
Under all the worry, irritation. Claire was, once again, the source of drama and conflict. Why, oh, why must she always be part of the household, always clamoring for the center of attention, always, always shrill and demanding?
Mary entered her parlor, which was also her work-room. As much as she would have liked to settle in with a book or to write in her journal, there were too many pressing duties. And she had too much to think about to write, anyway. Better, she thought, to occupy her hands, do something useful.
She took out a basket and cleared her work-table. Carefully she laid its contents on the table. Then she sighed and straightened, pressing her hands against her back. She let out a deep sigh. Rubbing her eyes with her hands, she looked down at her handiwork. Spread across the cheap deal table was a collection of scraps of bleached muslin, some lace and some ribbon snipped from an old dress. Somehow, she would contrive to assemble these into a new dress.
She glanced critically at the issue of the women’s magazine lying open at one edge of the table. The dress portrayed in it had too many ruffles for her taste, and a ridiculously restricted hemline that made the term “walking dress” a joke. But she could adapt it. She hummed to herself, working out seams and sleeve attachments, pondering the placement of lace. She picked up half the bodice, which she had just finished piecing, and held it up to her chest. Turning, she assessed the affect in the full length mirror behind her.
She would have to adjust the bust line, that was immediately apparent. Since William’s birth, she had been slow to regain the slender figure Shelley had loved at first sight. One of the reasons she was making a new dress was that she could no longer let out her older dresses. Besides, those girlish fashions, so reminiscent of the schoolroom, no longer fitted her self-image of motherhood. Her gaze met her own hazel eyes in the mirror as she thought about her future.
Would Shelley leave her? It was the fear always at the back of her mind, so devastating that she dare not give it voice lest that give it reality. He had left his wife for her. He had left his children for her. Would he leave her? Would he leave William? She despised herself for this fear. She was her mother’s daughter. She was not a slave to be bound to some man. She had thought that she could make her own living somehow, as her mother had done, but now with the care of an infant, she was not so sure. The nagging doubts about the purity of her mother’s motives dissolved as she recognized that, having once experienced the difficulty of raising a daughter on her own, Mary Wollstonecraft had opted for compromise when she realized she was pregnant again. She had married William Godwin as soon as she learned she was pregnant with Mary.
Mary looked at her reflection. How far could she compromise? What future did she have, if Shelley left her? She could not return to Skinner Street, to the father who rejected her, to the stepmother who despised her. She thought about being under Mrs. Godwin’s rule again. She shivered. Laying aside the fabric, she took up her shawl. Immediately, its comfort calmed her.
She had never known her mother, the famous writer who had died mere days after her birth. On nights when her stepmother raged and Claire quarreled, Mary could wrap herself in the soft cashmere and imagine her mother’s arms around her. Her mother had worn it when the portrait of her that hung over her father’s desk had been painted. She had worn it the night she had birthed Mary. She had worn it as she died. Her grieving father, who worshiped the memory of Mary Wollstonecraft, had wrapped his infant daughter in her dead mother’s shawl.
Mary remembered one year, the anniversary of her mother’s death, when her father had brought her into his study and opened the locked drawer of his desk. With her mother looking down on them, he had laid the shawl in her hands, saying nothing. Mary knew whose it was, even if she had not seen the tracks of the tears on Godwin’s face. And when she left her father’s house, she had taken the shawl with her, sole memento of her mother.
Mary sighed again, contemplating the varied scraps and bits of muslin scattered across the table. Perhaps she should piece them together, she thought. Too bad one cannot patch together a life. How could she stitch herself back to her father? How long would she and Shelley be joined? Forever? Or until tomorrow? He loved her, she was sure of that. But he had loved Harriet, his wife, too. Though he professed to love her no longer, Shelley had written to Harriet, urging her to come join him, Mary, and Claire in Europe. We should all live together, children, dogs, everyone, thought Mary. It would be like Byron’s menagerie of animals and birds, an ill-assorted lot that traveled around with him. Oh, how she longed for a home, Mary thought suddenly.
She remembered her father’s household on Skinner Street: two adults and five children, where no two children had the same parents. Like her basket of scraps, she thought, stitched clumsily together into a family. And that fabric tore so very easily. In fact, she had been able to unstitch herself from her stepmother, but only at the cost of bringing along Claire.
Sadly, she remembered that though Claire’s mother wrote to her, Mary still had heard not one word from her father.
“There you are!” Claire came in, her hair mussed. “Cook has quit.”
“What? Why? When?” Mary pulled her shawl tighter.
“Just this minute. Cook told Elise and Elise came to me.”
“Elise should have come to me. She knows I have worked in here every afternoon for the past three days.”
Claire scowled. “Why should she not come to me? No one said you were the head of this household. She has as much reason to tell me of household affairs as—”
“Oh, let us not quarrel,” Mary said suddenly. She sat down abruptly on a stool, clutching the shawl around her shoulders. “What was Cook’s reason?”
“Oh, as you would imagine—sheer laziness. She says she cannot cook to please so many demands.”
Mary closed her eyes. “Demands.
Yes, I can see that. Shelley is a vegetarian, yet Dr. Polidori will insist on meat at every meal.”
“Usually the most expensive cuts,” Claire sneered. “But what angered Cook was when I told her that Byron would only eat potatoes with salt and vinegar. He told me yesterday that he is on a reducing diet again. Although truly, I think he looks just as—”
“I must go down and speak to her,” Mary said, standing up again. She felt tired, bone-weary, not so much with physical fatigue but with a deep, sad longing inside her, which drained off her vivacity and energy. She unwound the shawl and dropped it on the table.
“I do not think it will do any good,” Claire said. “Cook has already left.”
“I thought you said this has just happened.”
“I heard her slam the door of the pantry as she left. It took Elise a few minutes to find me, and I couldn’t find you for fully a quarter of an hour. By now, Cook is halfway to Geneva.”
Mary took a deep breath. “Well, we must contrive. Perhaps we can order a cold collation?” She glanced at the window. “It’s light yet. I will send Shelley to order—”
“Shelley is still on his walk,” Claire said, avoiding Mary’s eyes. Their morning quarrel, unspoken but still felt, simmered between them. Both women refused to acknowledge it. “I do not think he will be back very soon.”
Knowing Shelley’s ways, Mary agreed. “What’s to be done?” she asked of no one in particular. She ran down possibilities in her mind. Borrow from a neighbor? They all shunned her and her family. Cook it herself? On such short notice, not knowing what was in her own larder, it seemed impossible. Finally, she said reluctantly, “There is no recourse. We must cry off.”
Claire looked shocked. “Dis-invite Byron? He would be mortally offended.”
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