Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of I Heart Radio and Aaron Manke.

Listener discretion is advised.

The first week of December in 1812, when a frost had just barely begun to cling to the

expansive lawns of Brockitt Hall, Lady Caroline Lamb ordered that a massive bonfire be built.

Once Lord Byron had first arrived in London society a little under a year ago, Caroline Lamb's

behavior had become increasingly strange, outrageous even.

The staff had learned not to ask too many questions.

From the nearby village of Wellwyn, Caroline gathered a group of local girls and told them

all to dress in white.

Within minutes, she was leading them down the road in a ghostly procession towards the

sky-looking orange flames.

She was like a pied piper, pulling them forward not with music, but with the implacable magnetic

force of her single-minded resolve and her gleeful anger.

While the village girls danced around the flames, Caroline Lamb revealed in effigy she had

built of Lord Byron, made of straw but unmistakable.

She threw it onto the flames.

As the fire leapt higher and began to consume the figure of straw, Caroline Lamb began

tossing other things into the fire.

Letters, quills, books, rings, and a golden locket.

And then once everything Caroline Lamb had left of her former lover was burning, she began

to recite a poem that she had written.

One fire burn while wondering boys exclaim, all gold and trinkets glitter in the flame.

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