by Lona Manning
“Yes, I recall now. He was punished by the gods for giving the gift of fire to Man.”
“The gift of fire,” said Shelley quietly. “The divine illumination. I would suffer as I do, every day, and willingly, if I could enlighten the world.”
“You can’t enlighten the world from Naples, Shelley.” Mary pushed him aside and crossed to her little desk where she wrote out a generous bank draft and handed it to him. “If you really mean what you say, you will not let any consideration prevent you from fulfilling your calling. Quickly! What if it is true—what if you have only a little time left on this earth. Before it is too late! Do not call this a loan, Shelley, since you lack the means of repaying me. But if you take this paper from my hand, understand that it means we shall be boarding a ship to England so soon as I am able to travel. Without your wife. Without her sister.”
Shelley kissed her hand fervently, then took the paper and looked at it, puzzled. “Bertram? I thought your name was Crawford.”
Mary explained and Shelley laughed, “Oh, that we could all throw off our past lives so easily!”
“It will be that easy, Shelley. Let us talk about what we shall do when we are back in England.” She took her seat again and Shelley lay his head on her lap once more. He spoke charmingly of their future life—of London, of walking together in Hyde Park, of going to the theatre, grandly dressed, or riding in a carriage with four horses to Richmond. Yes, perhaps it would be better to live in Richmond. So long as they lived near the river. They would get a little boat and go sailing together.
They would have a handsome library, and a study, and he would read aloud to her in the evening.
“We will be so happy—forever,” said Shelley, before drifting asleep, his head still in her lap.
* * * * * * *
Mary saw Shelley only irregularly during the month of December. Two days after Christmas, he appeared at her door, looking anxious and contrite, with a ball of soft Italian cheese. “There is an excellent family of cheese-mongers near our street, my dear,” he began. “And they actually speak a little English, to my amazement. They most particularly recommended—”
“I do not care to talk about cheese-mongers, Shelley.” Mary leaned her head on her hand and closed her eyes. She had a headache.
“My dearest, my Marina, of course not. But let us be merry—please, please, my dear. All is gloom at home, and gloom is everywhere, and I cannot bear it.”
Mary walked away and looked out the window across the bay, to where Vesuvius sat smoking. At night, she could often see small eruptions of red fire, liquid rock. She thought the mountain was no bad illustration of her temper—if she released all of the resentment she had been holding inside, she might scald Shelley with the force of it. He would be astonished that one woman could contain such rage. Or would he?
Instead, she turned back to him and said, “Thank you for the cheese.”
“Let me toast some for you by the fire,” Shelley offered, and he rang the bell for bread and some plates. “My friend Hogg and I, we used to sit up all night in my rooms in Oxford, talking. We would forget to eat our suppers and we would suddenly discover how hungry we were by about two or three in the morning. I became very good at toasting cheese,” and indeed, he sat cross-legged down by the fire, for all the world like a carefree school-boy, as though he was not now half way across the world, without funds, and with three women competing for his love and his attention.
Mary looked at him—at the intensity and absorption which he brought to everything he did, at his lanky form, his elfin face lit up by the flickering flames. Perhaps, only a year from now, they would be in their own household in London, —it would be only she and Shelley, and it would be Christmas, and he would toast cheese for her by the fire.
Oh. There would be their baby as well, in the nursery. And servants to make everything comfortable and pleasant, but mostly, it would be her and Shelley. And they would be celebrating the wild success of his travel book about Italy, or his translation of Plato, or his love poems.
And her head would not be throbbing, as it was now. Shelley looked up, and wonder of wonders, actually noticed that she was in pain. He set down the poker with the sizzling cheese, crossed to the table, and poured her a glass of wine mixed with water.
“Thank you, Shelley,” Mary murmured.
“Lie back, dearest,” said Shelley, and he tenderly arranged the pillows behind her head, and tucked a blanket around her, and sat down by her side, holding her hand. “How beautiful you look in the firelight! I wish I were better at drawing—I should love to take your portrait. We must find an artist to have it done.”
He leaned forward and kissed her gently, then ardently.
A sound, a movement caught their attention just at that moment. They both looked up to see Paolo Foggi standing in the doorway. He was bowing with his usual deference, his cap was in his hand, but there was no servility in his eyes. In vain did the servant attempt to hide his sly smile with a false coughing fit.
“Signor Shelley, please forgive me. I come running from home.”
“What is it, Paolo?” Shelley demanded.
“Sir, it is the Signora Claire. She is ill, she is asking for you.” Foggi shrugged his shoulders apologetically.
“Wait outside a moment, Paolo—I will be there directly.”
Foggi left, closing the door behind him with exaggerated care. Shelley and Mary sat and looked at each other.
“He must have followed me on some prior occasion,” said Shelley, “and observed that I visit here.” He rose and kissed her hand. “I must leave you, but I shall return as soon as I can.”
Mary felt the baby flutter and kick wildly under her heart.
“No, Shelley, do not go. I feel unwell.”
“Marina, do not add to my distress.”
“Your distress? Your distress?” Mary exclaimed. “I have waited five months for you! Cannot Claire wait for an hour?”
“Marina, that is hardly fair,” Shelley began, and his tone of condescension only goaded Mary further.
“How dare you speak to me in that fashion! No woman on earth would have been so patient as I. Whilst I wait for you to summon the courage to tell your wife about me, I pay for the food your family eats. I pay for the roof over their head.” Mary’s head felt as though it was going to explode. She sat up on the sofa, her long-suppressed resentment boiling over. “Look at you, Shelley! You are no further advanced in your career as a poet than you were the day we met. Had you listened to me and done as I asked—”
Shelley stiffened, his hand still on the door knob. “You must forgive me if I reject your enlightened and zealous benevolence. Indeed, you are never deterred or discouraged in schemes for my advancement and well-being, but had you been placed in a situation where you might have understood, could you know one-tenth of the pain, and the galling necessity under which I labour—”
“You always tell me that I am the first in your affections!” Mary cried. “Why, then, am I always the last? Why? Would to god I were free of you now!”
With an effort, Mary rolled off the divan, snatched up a vase and hurled it at Shelley. She missed, and the vase exploded against the door frame, shattering into pieces and scattering in all directions across the polished floor.
For a moment there was silence. Shelley looked astonished at first, and then he scowled. “I had expected more of greatness and generosity from you. Here is an occasion which calls for the sublimest virtue, and you are playing a part of mean and despicable selfishness.”
She rushed toward him, ready to rake her nails across his face—Shelley opened the door and flew out—the door slammed in her face just as she reached it. Mary banged her fists on the door, giving herself over to rage, weeping wildly, huddling on the floor where Shelley had left her. She felt, rather than saw, the afternoon sun setting beyond the bay, and much later, she looked up to see the angry glow at the rim of Vesuvius.
After some time, she tried to rise, and was seized with
strong pangs across her belly. She gave a cry of fright.
Her lady’s maid, who had not intruded upon the quarrel, came running.
“Madam?”
“Go to Dr. Roskilly’s surgery. Tell him to come immediately!”
The servant paused only to help Mary back to her divan and to place a quilt over her. Then she ran out the door.
Mary lay in the gathering darkness. Her flesh was taut against her belly; she rubbed the mound gently, willing the life within her to go back to sleep, to rest. It was too early, too early. She listened to her own breathing, to the pounding in her head, to the beating of her heart, and waited in dreadful anticipation.
The butler brought her brandy. She sipped several glasses and finally felt her body relax. She floated quietly, looking at the stars in the night sky, until the maid returned to her side.
“Signora, the doctor is not there. He has gone to another English lady.”
Mary groaned softly. Claire. She always came first.
* * * * * * *
Dr. Roskilly came the next morning, took her pulse, and spoke encouragingly, but advised her to remain in bed.
Mary preferred to lie on the divan, as the view from the drawing room windows was better. The dull pain in her back came and went with alarming regularity. “Keep yourself as tranquil as possible, madam,” the doctor advised. Mary feared that her anger toward Shelley might bring on an early delivery, and she resolved not to send for him.
Her first visitor of the New Year, to her disgust, was Shelley’s servant Paolo Foggi. The butler denied him, but Mary, hearing his voice, called to let him in. Her curiosity to know what was transpiring at the Shelley household could not be overcome.
She remembered Foggi’s elaborately servile manner from Bagni di Lucca. He removed his cap with a flourish, bowed profoundly, and approached her as though seeking an audience with an empress.
“May we speak alone, madam?”
“Do you have a message for me, Foggi?”
“No, madam? Who should give me a message?” Foggi said in an insinuating manner.
“What then, Foggi?”
“I came to see you for myself, knowing you to be the kindest, the most generous lady, to ask with all humility for your kind help. I am to be married, you see—and of course, one needs money to be married.”
“Well, Foggi, you seem to have forgotten poor Lucenza.”
“Ah yes, my dear little Lombard! Is she still in your service, madam?”
“Luckily for you, no. Was it you who stabbed her English lover?”
“Why—what did Lucenza tell you, madam? What did she say?”
“All right, then, I see there is nothing to be gained by asking you about it.”
“Indeed, madam. I know how to keep a secret. But, everyone at Bagni di Lucca thinks I am the one who stuck a knife in that stupid Robert, so everyone thinks I am a dangerous man.” He shrugged expressively. “Sometimes, it is good when people think you are a dangerous man.”
He took a step closer and bared his teeth in a ferocious grin.
Oh, Foggi. Mary could barely resist the urge to roll her eyes. You ham-fisted buffoon.
“So you need money. Did you ask Mr. Shelley?”
Foggi threw his head back and laughed theatrically. “Everyone knows, madam, that Signor Shelley has no money. But—you do.” The teeth gleamed again. “And you are a very clever lady, as well, quick to understand.”
“I would be a simpleton, indeed, if I did not understand when I was being threatened with blackmail.”
Mary rang the little bell beside her table, and the butler reappeared.
“Show this man the door. He is never to be admitted here again.”
“Certainly, ma’am.”
“Wait! Wait!” Foggi struggled with the butler. “I shall do it! I shall tell Mrs. Shelley everything! I will! I will!”
“Pray, suit yourself, Foggi. Good day to you.”
Foggi wrenched himself away from the elderly butler, and advanced again upon Mary, who struggled to sit up.
“You, you think you are so superior to all of us—you. What do you know? You know nothing. You think Mr. Shelley loves you, and you alone. Only I know. I know what Mr. Shelley and Signora Claire do together—how they meet in the garden when the wife is asleep—what they do in the carriage on the way to Venice.” He gestured out the window to Vesuvius, smoking in the distance. “And when they climb Vesuvius, the little fat Claire, she is too weak to walk, and she must be carried by four men! Why is she so weak? And why does she scream for the doctor last week?”
Mary felt the child inside her leap and dive. She took a slow breath, and placed her hand on her belly. Not now, she thought. Not now.
“Signore Foggi, Signore Foggi,” she began again. “Is Miss Clairmont—did she—is she well?”
“Well enough, madam. She was bad, but she did not die. And she eat her breakfast—as usual.” Foggi was about to discourse mockingly on the lady’s appetite, when Mary told him to hold his tongue.
He waited, twisting his cap in his hands, while Mary closed her eyes and thought. She wished she could rub her aching back, but did not want to show any weakness in front of Foggi.
Shelley said Claire had gone to Venice to see her daughter and rejoin Byron. Perhaps she and Byron resumed their intrigue. Or, perhaps Claire and Shelley were lovers. Perhaps Foggi was lying. Or even mistaken.
This is what life with Shelley would be. This is how it was for his first wife, and his present wife. Condemned to suffering the torments of jealousy and uncertainty, just as Shelley was assailed by the jagged shards of pain in his side. Well, he deserved it. He deserved every bit of the pain. He deserved to be chained like Prometheus to a rock, with birds ripping out his liver, for all eternity.
It was time to put an end to this farce.
“Tell me, Foggi, if you had sufficient funds, would you leave Naples?”
He sighed theatrically. “How can I, madam? I have not enough money—and we must be married soon,” he waggled his eyebrows. “Very soon—if you understand me.”
Mary ordered her butler, who had been hovering uncertainly behind Foggi, to go and fetch her jewel box.
“Foggi, I believe we can assist one another. I do not want my private affairs spread all over Naples. But if you go to Venice, for example, you could—”
“Anything, madam! It would be a pleasure!”
“You could tell Lord Byron. Tell all his friends. Tell the—tell the British consul. Tell everyone that Percy Bysshe Shelley has gotten his wife’s sister with child. Say nothing of me.”
Foggi could hardly find the words to express his eagerness to do the signora’s bidding. The name of Miss Clairmont would be in the mud when he was finished with her. She would be unable to show her face anywhere.
Mary waved him to silence as the butler returned with the jewel case. Mary removed some bracelets and ear-bobs and some bank notes, and gave it all to Foggi, whose eyes lit up.
“Do your part, Foggi, and do it well, and I will not forget it.”
Foggi bowed deeply—”You have my word, madam.”
Mary sighed and leaned her head back against the pillow. She lay awake for hours, watching the sun set, watching the dull red glow of Mount Vesuvius in the night. Shelley had compared her to water, to the sea; she was his Marina, he wanted to drown in her soul. He was going to discover he was wrong: she was fire.
* * * * * * *
A month passed. Mary’s door remained closed to Shelley and she kept to her sofa, feeling her belly tighten and relax, tighten and relax. She felt tolerably certain she would have a daughter, and she selected the name Elena Adelaide, after her mother and the new princess. It was a pity she would have to keep the child hidden away. Perhaps she could present Elena in London as a Neapolitan foundling she had adopted. So long as she had the backing of her friend Lady Delingpole, would anyone dispute the point? But with or without Shelley, she was determined to return to London so soon as she could travel.
One evening, Mary began to feel feverish, then chilly. Her headache and fever continued the next day, and she could not be persuaded to eat anything. “Just let me rest,” she murmured. Dr. Roskilly came and bled her, but her fever persisted. On the third night, her throat was so sore she could not speak. She tried to ring for more blankets, but she accidentally knocked the bell to the floor, and no-one heard her. She lay, her teeth chattering, shivering until dawn brought the maid to her bedside.
Light footsteps, heavy footsteps, soft voices, deep voices, lights and darkness. Brandy was poured down her throat. Cool hands gently tied up her hair, pulled the chemise off her back and slid on a fresh one, plumped the pillows under her head.
She was restless. The cramps in her belly grew stronger.
She sent for Shelley to come—urgently.
Chapter 22: England, Spring 1819
Mrs. Price cried a little as she bid farewell to Portsmouth, but it was nonetheless, the happiest and proudest day of her life. With what delight did Mrs. Price direct the coach-master to stop in front of a dwelling here, a shop there, so that she might call her old friends out on their doorsteps, to see her travelling by private carriage! Attired in a new silk gown! With handsome new luggage trunks and hat-boxes!
Fanny sat beside her mother, wearing her same old grey travelling dress. Ever since arriving in Portsmouth, Mrs. Price’s affairs had kept Fanny occupied. She had negotiated with Charles’s master to get Charles released from his indentures, for Fanny thought it best that he come with them to Northamptonshire where his mother and she might oversee his progress and encourage him to persevere. Betsey was enrolled in a good boarding school where she would remain until the new home in Huntingdon was ready and she and Charles could travel out together.
Susan and her husband came out to the street to behold the grand sight when Mrs. Price’s coach called at their home, and Susan bid her mother farewell, perhaps forever, with tolerable composure, while Fanny wept in good earnest at parting from her sister.