Divine Fire
Divine Fire
Melanie Jackson
LOVE SPELL 
NEW YORK CITY
Her host wasn’t wearing a coat or shoes. Also, he wasn’t so much standing as squatting on the ledge, a careless hand resting on an iron chain. He looked more than a little bit like the large gargoyles he perched between. As she watched, steam began rising from his body in a cloud, and it swirled about him in a slow, counter-clockwise cyclone.
He was beautiful, as beautiful as any midnight that had ever been. But he was also very odd, and—at least for Brice—maybe dangerous. As sure as the sun would show up in the east tomorrow morning, Damien Ruthven would be trouble for her if she allowed herself to get any closer.
To my cousin, Richard Magruder.
It was found that his limbs were nearly frozen in place, and his body apparently suffering from rigor mortis, though there had been no time for this to have occurred naturally since the lightning had passed through him. He also suffered from priapism which much disconcerted the ladies who thought him deceased. Their judgment was understandable for I never saw a man who appeared so dead and yet was not. We promptly carried him into the kitchen, and as soon as he had quitted the freezing air his eyes reopened. We restored him to consciousness by a sharp blow to the heart followed by rubbing him with a decoction of coca leaves, and then forcing him to swallow a strong stimulant of coca elixir and brandy. As soon as he showed signs of sturdy heartbeat and respiration, we wrapped him up in blankets, and placed him on a chair in the chimney of the kitchen fireplace where the bricks of the oven might warm him. By slow degrees he recovered his senses. The only marks upon him were a golden scar in the center of his chest and similar ones at his wrists and ankles.
—From the medical journal of Johann Conrad Dippel
Table of Contents
April 19, 1916
Lord Byron, the man who now called himself Adrian Ruthven, stared out into the stormy night. The lightning—power of the gods—would begin soon. He could feel the gathering energy dancing on his skin, calling him again to the purest of matings: the death that led to rebirth. Once there, in the gods’ embrace, he would again snatch a bit of that divine fire which kept him alive and his epilepsy at bay. He would continue to live.
But he was not alone that night as he kept vigil. For some reason, the ghosts from that summer at Villa Diodoti had again gathered. They hung about the shadowy corners of the room, smiling or accusing as they chose. Some he felt were still friends. Some were not.
Odd that they should come after all this time. Had his dark thoughts of the war raging in Europe summoned them from their rest? But perhaps it was understandable, even fitting, that they should attend this ritual on this centennial of his death; had they not all been there at the first moment of his new life? And was it not normal that he should on this anniversary contemplate the mortality of mankind and remember all those who were no longer of the earth?
“Hello, my friends. We meet again,” he whispered, speaking at last to the shadows.
Atheistic, immoral, subversive—all these words were applied to the people gathered in his memory and now in his parlor. And to a degree, they were all true. For Shelley—brilliant, defiant, ephemeral boy genius—most of all. What was now known as the era that marked the end of medieval obscurantism of thought, and as the birth of modern humanism, had been seen at the time as nothing more than promiscuity and wickedness. To the evangelicals and later Victorians, he—and Shelley especially—were anathema, bringers of chaos and unwanted change. They were the harbingers of the Industrial Revolution, and for that they were shunned, excoriated.
Of course, the greatest master of this new era was missing. Where was Johann Dippel?
“You choose to remain silent even now, do you?” Byron asked the shadows, and when no answer came, he turned again to his window and his thoughts twisted back to the notorious and glorious past where his new life had begun.
In the Year of Our Lord eighteen hundred and sixteen, his actions and speculation about his future plans were always gossip for the peasants at the Swiss lake. In London, too, that long century ago. There had been hypotheses about wild orgies, ghostly hauntings and Satanic rituals—all of which had made Byron laugh because such were so mundane, so much less amazing than the truth.
But the world would never know the truth, for of course an account of what really occurred that fatal night at Villa Diodoti was never to be given by its participants—though it haunted all of them for as long as they lived, and many must have longed for the comfort of confession. It had been a real horror story in which they’d participated.
Many would argue that Lake Geneva was a strange location for a ghost story. Villa Diodoti itself was a fairly pleasant place in good weather; the thriving vineyards around it were certainly handsome and bountiful in the warm season.
But that was in the summer and early fall. Winter was another matter. The snow-covered Alps surrounding the ancient villa, and that infernal blue lake and more infernal winter weather in 1816, made the place seem ever cold and damp, a place in some ring of hell where the sun never shone. And at night, when storms raged and the many candles used for light danced in the wayward drafts that ghosted through the dark rooms, it could seem haunted—by Milton’s unhappy shade, if by nothing more sinister.
And it was there, under the great poet’s own dead eyes, that history had been made.
“Hello, John,” Byron said, and he stared at the shadowy figure of John Polidori whose translucent reflection moved slowly into the window glass.
John’s mouth still pouted, drawing a slight sigh from Byron. If one needed a companion loyal and true, the first name to leap to mind was not John Polidori. Certainly, he’d been the one most likely to speak out about the events that night at the lake, for they had parted less than amicably. The physician had hinted at the truth in
The Vampyre
when he made the book’s immortal hero so nearly in Byron’s image; but though often envious of the fame that came to Byron and Shelley, Polidori had kept his word and never betrayed the secret to which he had been privy.
John didn’t speak now, either, and Byron’s gaze shifted to the next huddled shade. Poor masochistic Mary. She was present as well, but she did not smile at him as she once had. Her guilt over their actions that fatal night had caused her to write a version of the event in her novel
Frankenstein
. When asked, she claimed to have been inspired by a nightmare. No one had ever guessed that the sad Viktor Frankenstein and his monster were fictional creations born of an experiment conducted by one Johann Conrad Dippel to cure a reluctant and desperate Lord Byron of his violent brain seizures.
Even later, when she hated Byron for his fame—notoriety she claimed he’d torn from a dead Shelley’s pale laurels—she’d never told a soul of what was done in Switzerland. She must have wanted to speak out, to renounce Byron as an unholy abomination, but she didn’t. Not even after she’d seen his badly autopsied corpse, which had been mutilated about the face and allowed to decompose before being embalmed and then pickled in brine for the journey back to England and his less-than-adoring wife. She must have known from the discrepancy in height that it was not really Byron’s body in that coffin, and suspected the truth. Yet she had not spoken.
“Thank you, m’dear. It was generous of you,” he said to the dark-haired wraith. “More generous than I probably deserved.”
He looked next at Claire Clairmont and Shelley, but neither his former lover nor his dear friend breathed or blinked or spoke.
“How oddly silent you all are,” he said to the blond apparition of the man he’d befriended before Fame had noticed and smiled upon his genius. “You used to be more outspoken, Percy. Had you lived longer, would you have someday told our tale? No, I think not. You, too, would have remained true—though we all seemed cursed from that day onward.”
Byron’s eyes searched the shadows again, still looking for Johann, but to no avail.
“Where is Dippel?” he asked the room. “You would think that he would wish to attend. I am, after all, one of his great triumphs.”
Perhaps Dippel wasn’t there because he still lived. People had thought him dead in 1743, but he was alive and well in 1816 when he’d come at Mary’s urgent invitation to Villa Diodoti to demonstrate his bizarre research to the ailing Lord Byron.
But surely not. The crowd that had stormed Dippel’s castle the following winter had not been forgiving of the blasphemies they found within. Every animal and human construction had been burned, all occupants slaughtered, and the unburied dead returned to the graves Johann had stolen them from.
Byron pushed the horrible memory away.
“This has to be the world’s best kept secret,” he said to his silent guests. “Truly—governments would envy us, if they knew. And think what it did for the world of literature. No house party before or since has ever been so productive, and it was all because of this one secret event.”
Even in his memoirs, where he had been scrupulously honest about every detail of his life, he had not made an accounting of those wild events, or how young Pietro Gamba had helped him fake his death in Greece when it became apparent that he was not aging as a human should.
If Byron’s rebirth was the world’s greatest secret, then his death was the world’s greatest hoax. And he had never regretted his actions—except that they had led to a parting with Teresa Guiccioli. She had deserved better than to be left with the care of his three favorite geese and a storm of gossip about their violently ended love affair. Teresa had not been as obsessive or public about her love as Caroline Lamb, but her affection had been as sincere and as well-known. He had missed her for many years after their parting. He’d had no real loves since. And no real friends either.
The first of the lightning strikes flared in the sky, and the earth beneath his house shuddered from the shock waves. Others in the city wouldn’t feel it so keenly, but he had ordered the building constructed of iron girders. The entire structure was a lightning rod designed to attract a peculiar kind of cloud—muscular ones that made up those very special storms, the ones that contained the life-sustaining Saint Elmo’s fire.
Adrian turned from the window, letting the heavy curtain fall, and began to undress. He would have to go up to the rooftop soon and bare his body, zigzagged with golden scars, to the wild night and the power that lived in it. If all went well and he survived the pain, then he would return, renewed and marked with fresh disfigurements that he would need to hide from the world.
The ghosts from his past looked on as he moved, approving and disapproving as they chose. Adrian shrugged, as indifferent to their opinions as he always had been, and returned to his earlier reverie about mortality and the decision not to shake off his mortal coil. Not yet.
All that fuss after his death! He had at first been amused and disgusted in almost equal measure to learn that he was posthumously considered alternately a naive saint with an extravagant fondness for animals, or else the devil incarnate who’d spent his life devising the ravishment of women and the corruption of men’s souls while dashing off bits of inflammatory poetry in his spare time.
There had been many causes for vexation and worry in the weeks after his death, but his only true moment of anger had been with Hobhouse and Murray for surrendering to Anna’s will and burning his memoirs before they could be published. But in the end he’d had to admit that it was probably for the best that his journal had ended on the pyre. He knew that the people of Albion would build their myth about the late Lord Byron, blowing his life out of all proportion—both in goodness and in wickedness—and while they were distracted with expanding the legend, he could go on living as he always had, with no one being the wiser about the renegade poet who still walked and lived among them.
Naked, hair unbound, he stepped over the trunks and other luggage and mounted the iron stairs that led to the roof where the gargoyles and other lightning rods waited. His syringe, loaded with a seven-percent solution of cocaine, was already laid by. The metal was cold on his feet, but that didn’t bother him. Soon heat would diffuse every cell of his body. If it did not kill him, then he would come away with internal fires ablaze. He would not know cold for at least another fifty years.
The wall to the east was patterned with flattened bullets grouped to look like flowers. They appeared as imperfectly shaped silver coins when the moonlight hit them. Adrian practiced shooting from time to time, though he no longer soldiered on a regular basis, and was always pleased to discover that his skills as a marksman had not deteriorated. He had learned that Dippel’s earlier experiments had not been so coordinated after the lightning passed through their brains and bodies. Of course, Dippel’s earlier experiments had mostly started out dead—a fact the doctor had failed to mention before attempting to “cure” him.
In the dark, Byron thought he heard someone whisper:
There he goes, a dead man walking.
“Not dead,” he murmured. “Just possessed of numerous, colorful obituaries.”
He’d certainly had a royal send-off that first time. To begin, in Greece there was a thirty-seven-gun salute. Easter was canceled and the country ordered to wear black for three weeks. The fake body had lain in state the whole time, coffin draped in a black cloak and surmounted by a sword, helmet and crown of laurels. Bless the extravagant and loyal Greeks! Their mourning for their hero had been sincere. Their unabashed display of grief had touched him.
His interment in England had been more amusing. So scandalous was his reputation at home—and yet so august his position as the hero of the Greek Revolution—that society had not known how to mourn him. Even his old friends were worried about his widow Anna’s reaction. Showing disrespect by boycotting the funeral would enrage her and hurt Byron’s sister. Yet expressing any admiration for her late detested husband would also earn them her undying wrath and societal censure.
Finally one man had hit upon the notion of sending his empty carriage, emblazoned with the family crest, to ride in the procession. Thus was respect shown, but in no way could Anna feel that anyone was too worshipful of the notorious lord. Others had quickly followed the example, trying to outdo one another with displays bearing extravagant coats of arms.
Anna, demonstrating no other interest in the affair beyond buying new widow’s weeds, had left her husband’s sister Augusta to arrange for the hearse. Augusta had chosen one of impressive size that had to be drawn by six black horses to carry her brother’s remains to the family vault. The vehicle was necessarily large, to accommodate both the lead-lined coffin and the many urns bearing his organs removed during the autopsy, but Byron was certain his sister had chosen it more for effect than out of any logistical consideration.
The undertaker had seen to it that the numerous vessels were suitably draped in black velvet palls, and that the horses were arrayed in ridiculous black plumes larger than any lady’s hat. The procession was enormous, though silent, ghostly even, because most of the carriages were empty. And that was fitting, since the level of mourning among his family was so diminished as to be nonexistent.
All that had been missing from the event were hysterics by Caroline Lamb as she threw herself on his grave and demanded to be buried with him; but she had not heard of his passing in time to attend the services, and so the world was denied the spectacle.
Yes, it had all been very gothic and morbid—and he’d enjoyed it hugely. It was still his favorite funeral.
After, he’d left for America and a new life. He had gone back to his home in England only once during what might be termed his natural lifetime. That was after Mary died. But he’d hated it. Everything he had known and loved was gone and in graves, marked only by cold stone monuments. Even his family estate seemed more like a mausoleum than a mansion—which was fitting, considering that the abbey had seen the burial of hundreds of monks.