“At least if the trunk is still heavy, that means they haven’t burnt them all,” replied Mary.
“Shouldn’t we hire some men to bring it up now?”
“It is Shelley’s difficulty, not mine,” came the answer. “I scarcely have enough money to buy victuals.”
Claire looked doubtful.
“I have not enough funds to pay the servants,” Mary said crossly. “Let Shelley find the money for it.”
While the two women were arguing, Mary Bertram slowly rose from her seat. She struggled furiously with herself to maintain her composure. She vibrated with inner rage. She walked out of the café, went directly to the post office, and with the calm authority of an Englishwoman who never expects her will to be questioned, paid for Mr. Shelley’s trunk to be delivered to her apartments at the Casa Ciampi.
* * * * * * *
Fortunately, Lucenza was gone somewhere.
The trunk was a battered old school-boy’s trunk and the lock proved to be flimsy and easy to force. Mary fell upon the contents as avidly as the girl named Claire had attacked the pork chops at the café.
She pulled out books, mostly in Greek and Latin, and impatiently tossed them aside. She found a few journals and manuscripts held together with string and ribbon. But there were no letters to “Mrs. Shelley,” nor any letters from his wife to him.
The journals, which at first she supposed were diaries, proved to be a confused tangle of fragments of poetry, sketches, and other jottings. These too she set aside.
She found a slim volume entitled: Laon and Cythna; or, The Revolution of the Golden City, by Percy B. Shelley.
So this was the poem Percy mentioned—the one he had been forced to withdraw and revise.
She opened the book and her eye fell upon the Dedication.
So now my summer-task is ended, Mary,
And I return to thee, mine own heart’s home;
As to his Queen some victor Knight of Faery,
Earning bright spoils for her inchanted dome—
Mary. His heart’s home. His Queen.
She threw the book across the room.
The following morning, Mary summoned a horse and rode to the grove with the waterfall. He wasn’t there. Mary slid off her mare and tethered her. She sank down upon the long boulder which had previously served as a bench for the two of them. She had intended to brood upon her anger, her betrayal, but instead she was consumed by the memories of her body entwined with Shelley’s. She closed her eyes and surrendered to the sensations which flooded through her.
When she opened her eyes again, there was Shelley standing before her, carrying his books and his little napkin filled with raisins and almonds. She sprang to her feet.
“You have a wife. You have a WIFE! And you never told me!” She spat the words at him.
Instead of looking guilty, Shelley looked bewildered. “And you have a husband. But that did not prevent you from becoming the partner of my soul.”
“Now I know why you would not call me Mary!”
“My dearest Marina—”
“Do not call me that!”
Shelley held out his hand, inviting her to sit down with him, as though he were summoning up the patience to explain the multiplication tables to a child. Astonished at herself, Mary obeyed and sat down, though she was so angry, her blood pounded in her ears.
“Mary is her name,” he said. “Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin. She is the daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft, the lady who wrote A Vindication of the Rights of Woman—”
“I know who Mary Wollstonecraft is! A madwoman who threw herself off Putney Bridge! I wish to heaven she had been left to drown! Then she would never have whelped that red-headed succubus you call your wife!”
“And Godwin,” Shelley continued, unperturbed, “I have told you how his philosophy is the wellspring of my creed, the foundation of all my beliefs and principles. Imagine, my dearest, imagine meeting the daughter of two such glorious parents! I can’t reproach myself for thinking she was marked out to be my partner. And she was infatuated with me! In fact, it was she who spoke of love, before I ever did, it was she who gave herself to me, completely, in front of her mother’s tomb!”
“I saw your dedication in your poem. She is your own ‘heart’s home.’“
Shelley attempted to take her hands, but she pushed him away. He shook his head, more in disbelief than in apology. “Did you not think yourself in love with your husband when you married him? Do you not comprehend that you and I have made the same grievous error, and are suffering the same miserable regret? I have been a good husband to Mary. But she has withdrawn her affections from me. She does not understand me.”
Mary tossed her head and turned away; she felt Shelley move closer to her, pleading with her.
“My dearest Marina, you spoke of your husband being cold. I have felt the same torment. I was frozen in ice, even here, under the Italian sun, for my wife’s disapproval is so impenetrable. And just as you remained with your husband, year after weary year while he crushed your spirit, so I have stayed with Mary, for the sake of our children.”
He leapt up and knelt before her, pleading, his eyes filling with tears. “My soul has been seeking you, my Marina, across England, and Ireland and Italy, and there you were, following me!”
The intensity of his gaze was so overpowering that she looked away.
“I know you, my love. I know you were restless, dissatisfied, as though you
