Free Riot Most Uncouth by Daniel Friedman Page B

fade, and too massy to fall;
    It tells not of Time’s or the tempest’s decay,
    But the wreck of the line that have held it in sway.

    â€” Lord Byron, “Newstead Abbey”
    â€œThis place is like something out of a fairy story,” said my mother. She flexed her fat ankles and then lifted her bulk into a sort of clumsy pirouette. She spread her arms and wiggled her thick fingers, and tried to spin around but stumbled halfway through her rotation.
    â€œCome dance with me, George!” The sleeves of her dress slid back, so I could see her white, dimpled elbows. The flesh of her arms was like raw bread dough.
    â€œI am not your little George anymore,” I said. “I’m Lord Byron.” I stretched my back, trying to look taller. I was nine years old.
    â€œDance with me, Lord Byron,” said my mother. I had a great, unwieldy iron brace on my leg, and no intention of trying to dance in it, but she lifted me off my feet and twirled me in the air.
    Newstead was a decrepit ruin. The great drawing room had an inch of dirt on the floor, and mold growing up the walls. Shafts of sunlight poked through fissures in the ceiling, for the roof above was mostly blown away. The room was otherwise fairly dark; most of the lamps along the walls were unlit, and many of them were broken.
    â€œThere’s no music, Mother.”
    Most days, Catherine was beset by melancholia and consigned herself to isolation, and she wept ceaselessly for her dead parents and her lost castle at Gight, and for Mad Jack. On such occasions, I was left mostly to my own devices, and to the depredations and abuses of whatever unsavory sorts I encountered. But when my mother was boisterous, she was inescapable.
    â€œI hear music! The most wonderful music. An elegant chamber quartet; oh, waltz with me, Lord Byron. Do me the honor.”
    In the dark recesses of the great long hall, I saw the stooped figure of Joe Murray appear in a shaded doorway. His pale face seemed to glow in the dim light.
    Joe Murray had come with the house. He’d been a longtime servant of my great-uncle, and funding had been set aside in the old man’s will to provide a salary for him, as long as he wished to serve whoever was Lord Byron. This was more likely a scheme of some sort rather than an act of generosity, for William Byron was always a schemer and never a benefactor. I suspect that Joe Murray would have been a malevolent presence in the house if the Wicked Lord’s hated son had inherited Newstead, as expected. But the old Byron had borne no particular animus toward me, and so Joe Murray was mostly benign; a servile wraith always hovering at the edge of my perception.
    My gaze met his, and he cocked an eyebrow as if to ask if I needed assistance. I waved him off, and he vanished. Catherine never saw him; she was too busy dragging me across the floor, my brace squeaking and scraping through the thick layer of rot and filth caked on the swollen floorboards.
    â€œI had a castle,” she said. “And I lost it unjustly, and my man went away. And I was left all on my lonesome. I was a pretty, pretty princess, consigned to filthy, squalid exile. But my own, only laddie love turned out to be a secret heir to a magnificent fairy palace, and now we will live happily ever after together and never be lonely.”
    â€œYou know I must go away soon. To school. I cannot stay here.”
    â€œBut today, we dance! And when your father returns, he’ll be so happy to see what we’ve got that he’ll take us both in his arms and never leave again.”
    â€œFather is dead. Everyone says so.”
    â€œOf course he isn’t. He’s traveling on business. You mustn’t believe every naughty thing you hear.”
    I was willing to cling to whatever hope my mother gave me, though I’d learned of my father’s death, indirectly, from Catherine. While we were still in Aberdeen, she received a black-bordered letter