The Paper Boat

Excerpt from The Paper Boat, a novel on the life and works of Percy Bysshe Shelley

By Elizabeth McKague (2013) available on Amazon.com

Christmas Dinner at Lord Byron's Palace

There is a path on the sea’s azure floor,

No keel has ever ploughed that path before;

The halcyons brood around the foamless isles;

The treacherous Ocean has forsworn it’s wiles;

The merry mariners are bold and free:

Say, my heart’s sister, wilt thou sail with me?

Trelawny was correct in guessing that the entire Pisan circle of Byron’s friends would be present at the Piazza Lanfranchi on Christmas day. Byron himself had over extended his hospitality and laid out a voluptuous table of delicacies the English in exile had not yet ever seen, let alone tasted, in Italy before. An enormous turkey with stuffing and gravy, Cornish game hens, pheasant, duck, sweet carrots, mashed potatoes fashioned into statuesque forms, French beans marinated in a vinaigrette sauce, plum pudding, bread pudding, dumplings, cakes and tarts of all flavors, excellent Scotch whiskey, fine port wine from Spain, red Bordeaux, white Sancerre, champagne as crisp as the snow capped Apennines, Turkish coffee and of course an assortment of the finest Asian teas. He even had a vegetarian pie made especially for Shelley and hired a renowned quartet all the way from Rome to play Brahms, Handel and mostly Mozart.

His guests arrived promptly at three and the festivities began. The men were all dressed handsomely; Trelawny in white, to accent his dark features, Taffe in blue, Williams in black, the Prince wore gold, Byron paraded around in a long green velvet jacket and Shelley wore a new suit Mary had bought him, a soft charcoal color that set off the azure seas in his eyes. The women wore their best dresses, Jane in pink, Mary in crimson, Taffe’s mistress Lilla in violet and Byron’s dear countess, Teresa Guiccoli, was wrapped in black satin and wore red roses in her blond, Northern Italian hair. Byron had even compromised his zoo, probably on Teresa’s request, by gathering all the animals into the basement. Of course a stray canary, cat or peacock would occasionally float into the dining hall, but every one was so merry that it seemed they wouldn’t have been distracted if a wolf suddenly appeared. Shelley was impressed by the enchanting ambiance Byron had created and wanted to express his sentiments, but the activities of the party surrounded its host and he couldn’t seem to find the chance. Finally, after the meal, when the ladies began to dance, Byron himself approached Shelley and asked him to follow him to his library. After they entered, he shut the door and lit a cigar.

“Must be some cigar, that you lock yourself up in your library to smoke it.” Shelley joked, having drunk a bit of wine and become somewhat jolly.

“It’s a good cigar ol’ chap, but that’s not why I called you up here.” Byron stared at his friend for a moment with a sad curl in his brow, “Sit down.” He said.

Shelley sat whilst the muffled tones of Baroque concertos lifted through the floorboards. “Well, what is it? Are you going to give me my Christmas present?”

“Later. Listen, Shelley, this is rather serious. Perhaps it’s a bad day, but I cannot wait much longer to tell you.” Byron took a long puff of his cigar, “It’s about Emilia.”

“Is she alright?” Shelley panicked.

“I’m sure she is fine. I don’t know, you know I’ve never met the girl. But, I do know who she is. Viviani, Percy, she is a Viviani, and Niccolo’s daughter.” He shook his head, “It’s no good, my friend.”

“What are you saying, Byron?”

“This is a small town, people talk, they confuse us- you and I- one English poet is the same as the next to these people. In Ravenna and Rome, a rumor has got out that I am the one visiting Emilia, which is disastrous for me- and you know why... even the truth, because you are associated with me, is risky.”

Shelley’s head suddenly became very clear. He stared through a cloud of smoke that Byron had just exhaled and asked, “Are you talking about the Carbonari? I thought all that ended in Ravenna?”

“Ended? My friend, it can never end. I have no choice in the matter. The mob is the mob, and they don’t forget. I will tell you- because I trust you, that I am more involved than I believe you or anyone ever imagined.”

Shelley was aware of Byron’s contact with the Carbonari, a group of freedom fighters focused on Italy’s liberation from Austrian invasion and Papal dominance. Together their branches throughout Italy included as many as 800,000 members. Some bands, such as the one Byron had associated himself with in the Romagna, were quite clandestine, practicing strange rituals and codes of secrecy that emulated the ancient order of the Freemasons. The sect was called ‘la turba,’ or the mob, and their missions took on many forms, from the theatrical cloak and dagger meetings in midnight forests to brutal murder and political crime. Byron, of course, had been attracted to their cryptic ritualism but never had any intention of going beyond the costumes and comradeship that had intrigued him as a sort of magical entertainment during his initiation period in the midnight woods. Shelley also knew that Byron’s wealth was not a mere treasure box of luxurious living, but that he had many people in many places who managed his funds for various purposes other than getting and spending. Byron’s money had to some extent entered the zone of the entire European economy, and his name and power was dependent upon a certain, rather distant commitment to maintain the balance of that financial flow. Eventually, his toying with ‘la turba’ when he lived in Ravenna led to a more serious involvement in which he unexpectedly found himself a victim of their ‘games.’ After several episodes of attempted murder, government surveillance and sabotage of his own property, he ultimately, with wracked nerves, resorted to bribery, outrageous promises and whatever else he could use as clout without spilling his own blood, in order to release his membership from the society. But as he was trying to express to Shelley now, it was not and could never be, a complete release. He had come to Pisa to flee the pressure of the Carbonari on the east coast, and it was working to some extent, but the small town was still laced with informants and Byron would always be a potential culprit for the plans of the mob, unless he appeared to be upholding his own original and unfortunately, rather inextinguishable Mephistophelian vows. Since Lord Byron was not the strictest man of principles, he personally lost nothing in occasionally signing a few surprise bank notes or proving by his own actions and those of his associations that he remained on the rebel side of Italian politics. Shelley’s connection with Emilia Viviani was thus an alarm of quite bad news.

Byron paced the room for some minutes then stopped before a blazing fire in the hearth and said, “You must stop seeing her, Shelley.”

“I can’t do that, my Lord, I-”

Byron took several large, awkward strides away from the hearth to reach Shelley’s chair, “I’m telling you this now before the Governor himself ostracizes you, which he will do sooner than later, I’m sure of it. It is for your own protection. You know I don’t give a damn if you’re bopping every nun in Italy, but the Huns are on the Po and all Italy will rise behind them: the dogs, the wolves- may perish like the Host of Sennacherib and you and I will be the first to be dragged into the dust of their stampede.” He shook his fat cigar in Shelley’s wide-eyed face, “Viviani and Carbonari just don’t mix.”

“We don’t ‘bop’ as you call it. We sit in the convent gardens and speak of the soul. There is no harm in that, no reason for accusation.”

“Good God, Shelley! The ‘soul’ and ‘reason’ have nothing to do with it!” Byron’s face was red with an anger rising above the pity he felt for the naive idealism his friend used to support his defense. “We are talking about Italian familial and political history here, Romeo, you and Juliet and myself as well, could very well end up dead!”

Shelley sat sulking in the chair, his stubborn eyes meet Byron’s penetrating stare. “You are serious, aren’t you?”

Byron nodded; the worried crinkle in his brow had turned to lines of pain. “Why do you think I placed Allegra with the sisters at Bagnacavallo? Contrary to suspicions that you or your wife or her crazy mother have thought up, it wasn’t out of spite or selfishness, and religious piety has nothing to do with it. I had no choice in Ravenna, Shelley. The possibility that Allegra could have been in some danger haunted me. I shut the poor child up in the orphanage because she would be safe there. Do you understand?”

The depth of the matter Byron had been trying to relate to Shelley suddenly hit him. He was not unacquainted with the brutal reality of a violent world. Although he had in the past ventured to enter it in hopes for change, he saw now that his verse and protests had been but child’s play.

“And now? Is there danger- for any of us?” Shelley spoke to Byron for the very first time with the appropriate tone of someone addressing this man who was after all, in the public eye, his superior.

Byron’s face relaxed, realizing that Shelley had finally understood him. “Now, no. Things had been peaceful for me until this rumor began to circulate. And it must be arrested immediately before anything gets out of control. There is only one solution, my dearest comrade. You must break away from Emilia Viviani.”

Shelley stroked back the stray weeds of hair that had fallen across his face and stared into the shadows from the firelight bouncing about the room, contemplating the matter deeply. A white owl who had been tucked in the shadows of a book shelf called out, ‘who...who...,’

Byron paced across the Persian carpets, holding his head down, repeating the alternatives he had already processed, to no avail, in a mental rehearsal of this very speech, which he had been devising for the past few days. There was a pause in the Christmas music that been echoing through the floorboards from the dance hall below.

Finally, forcing defiance into his voice, Shelley said, “I’ll never forgive you for this.”

“I can’t forgive myself,” Byron sighed, “man is a dangerous animal.”

“When amongst other animals, yes, Lord B., I suppose he is.”

They didn’t move for some time. Then Byron handed Shelley his cigar. The lovesick poet took it, puffed on it and coughed himself into a short episode of breathlessness. When he recovered, they rose and returned to the party in a reconciling embrace.

The music, dancing, drinking and feasting continued late into the evening. Everywhere he turned Shelley encountered nothing but jubilance and was soon persuaded to put aside his conversation with Byron and partake of the merriment. He drank a bit more wine and became as sociable as he had ever been until he began to feel uneasy and decided, close to midnight, to step outside for some air. He climbed the marble stairs and followed a long hall to a third floor balcony in the back of the house which over looked Byron’s back yard. A silver frost covered the bare branches of lemon and orange trees. Beyond the yard, a dim light glowed from the stables, where the soft noise of horses burring in their stalls echoed lightly across the dry earth. His eyes roamed about within the circumference of shadows, and he suddenly glimpsed the stable boy in the loft of the barn where a lantern had been lit in the stalls below. The boy was rolling in a mound of hay with a young peasant girl in his arms. Shelley thought to turn away but kept his eyes on them. The warm, red lantern light flickered through the open shutters of the loft window and drew his gaze like a beacon. He watched the young couple, charging each instant directly with a passion for existence itself saturating their limbs, moistening their thick black hair, warming their blood against the vacuous cold of the night. Their bliss somehow soothed him. The girl’s lips were full and red and wet from kissing. The boy’s hands could not leave her skin; he touched her everywhere, as if each place he touched were new, sparkling, fascinating, full of wonder mixed with promises. He kept her tenderly in his arms, like a child who has unwrapped the very gift he longed for on a Christmas morning, holding her gently at first, almost unbelievably, then gradually held her closer and closer against his own delirious body until the recognition that she was finally in his possession seemed to dawn on him. Although Shelley could not see his eyes, he felt he could read his thoughts and believed at that moment that the boy had secretly, happily, vowed to himself that he would never let her go. The girl began to toy with him, opening and closing her softness like a flower; at one moment radiant and thirsty, at another, withering, folding back into the rougher shades of her Tuscan olive leaves, protecting her apparent virginity with dark whispers that pierced the boy’s lust like thorns. They clung to their dance, the night, the wispy strings of straw in their bed as the mild flames from the dimming light of the single lantern below leapt through the wooden beams of the loft until it burned down so low that Shelley could only hear their moans and sighs rising into the dead silence of new, falling snow. He looked up into the sky and traced Orion, Cassiopeia and Cygnus the swan.

His lips were stiff from the frost, his ears were ringing and still, he stood there on the balcony in the cold black night, watching the snow glide down like tiny white embers of dying stars. He turned to re-enter the mansion but stopped suddenly, surprised at a dark figure walking toward him. The figure emerged into the light of the moon and Shelley saw his own image, a ghost of himself who then spoke to him, asking, “How long do you mean to be so content with your self?”

Shelley froze in his steps. The apparition continued, its voice was faint but piercing, cold but melting, like a sliver of ice, “What did you really want from her?”

He answered immediately, his words shivered. “Freedom.”

“Yet is it her freedom you were after? Or your own?”

Shelley felt the agony of his own fight for freedom chill him to the bones. “It can’t be over. Have I lost everything?” He asked the ghost.

The shadowy figure began to dissolve into the falling snow.

“Did I lose everything?” He demanded, “Tell me! Did I lose the poem?”

The ghost’s voice sailed around his ringing ears, “How does love work?”

“How?” The question tormented him. A snowflake dropped right into his eye and made him blink. The ghost had vanished. He was all alone on the balcony.

“How...?” He turned to face the dark yard, “I suppose I don’t know anymore.” In the last sparks of red light coming from the barn, he saw the silhouette of the young lovers, entwined, and turned slowly away in the softly falling snow to go back inside.